With campaigning for the General Election under way in the Chippenham constituency we meet the Conservative candidate.

MICHELLE Donelan has promoted bouts between international wrestlers and now she is facing the biggest fight of her life standing in one of the Tory’s 23 key seats.

Her own father is too disillusioned with politics to vote, but former marketing executive Miss Donelan reckons as someone “very ordinary” she can give the Chippenham electorate something to believe in.

“We have far too many career politicians not in touch with real life,” she said. “We need more real people that manage a household budget and know what it’s like to struggle.”

Miss Donelan comes from three generations of small business owners; her granddad was born above a fish and chip shop.

“Sometimes we’d be struggling,” she said. 

“Business went up and down from one month to the next. I had a secondhand PE uniform and wouldn’t be able to go on school trips,” she said.

It was seeing her dad’s home improvements business “crumble under Labour” that spurred her to become politically active, and at 15 she was already commenting at a Conservative party conference debate.

She moved to Monkton Park in Chippenham in May 2013 after unsuccessfully taking on Labour in South Yorkshire in 2010.

Miss Donelan said she loves Wiltshire for its “community spirit and level of volunteering”. 

“It is so much like the area I grew up in, small market towns – wonderful on paper but deeper, it has the issue of commuting. If you build more and more houses you can become a dormitory town; you’re not there in the day to spend money in your local economy, you don’t have the time or inclination to be active in the community.”

The need to rejuvenate town centres is one of the three biggest challenges she feels Wiltshire is facing. Her other two priorities are creating more local jobs and protecting the countryside, preventing the bleeding of towns into villages.

What keeps her going on the campaign trail is “the thought of what I want to achieve”. 

“I think Wiltshire deserves so much more,” she said. 

“If ever I’m tired I just have to think about why I’m doing it. This seat is very important nationally so there is a burden on me. If we don’t win this seat, we don’t win nationally. It is not an option."

She does not believe being young, or a woman, will hold her back. 

"I used to go on promotional tours with the wrestlers. That’s a male-dominated industry with some very big characters,” she added. 

“I like to think if I can handle wrestlers I can handle the House of Commons.”

Name: Michelle Donelan
Age: 31
Address: The Paddocks, Chippenham
Birthplace: Whitley, Cheshire
Education: Read history and politics at the University of York
Occupation: Worked in marketing for more than six years until March 2014, with Sky’s History Channel and then World Wrestling Entertainment in corporate social responsibility
Marital status: Single
Children: None
Religion: Christian

Standing in Chippenham are: Michelle Donelan (Conservative); Duncan Hames (Liberal Democrat); Tina Johnson (Green); Andy Newman (Labour); Julia Reid (UKIP).