FROM the moment his long accountancy career ended in redundancy four years ago, Paul Howell’s rise has been truly meteoric, like a political shooting star blazing across the blue night sky.

It was only in 2017 that he won his first election as a councillor and his political career sparked into life, even if he was just a minor irritant on the Labour rump that dominates Durham County Council.

In May 2019, his career began fizzing brightly as he was elected in Darlington and, with the Conservatives surprisingly winning control of the council, Mr Howell was launched into the cabinet.

The Northern Echo: Paul Howell, and his cat Pepsi, in the hallway of his home in Darlington. Picture: Carlos Rosillo of El PaisPaul Howell, and his cat Pepsi, in the hallway of his home in Darlington. Picture: Carlos Rosillo of El Pais

And then in December, he lit up the sky – and the national headlines – as the Tory tsunami swept him to Westminster to represent the Tories’ most prized gain of the night: Sedgefield.

Little wonder Mr Howell, eyes still wide with wonderment, looks like the cat who got the cream – and found it to be gold top.

“A week after the election, I was in central lobby in Parliament when a group of young schoolchildren came round,” he says. “One girl had her mouth wide open, taking it all in, and asked me ‘are you famous’?

“I replied ‘last week I wasn’t, but last weekend I was on every paper front page because as a Conservative I’ve just won the seat the Labour Prime Minister used to hold, and I just saw the teacher’s eyes light up – she realised who I was.

“I’m like that little girl with her mouth open – it’s just awesome to be down there.”

He was born in Bishop Auckland hospital 60 years ago, and grew up in Ferryhill and Newton Aycliffe before his father’s job as a divisional fire officer brought the family into Darlington.

His school days: Dean Bank, Sugar Hill and The Avenue Comp. His accountancy days: Darchem, Perstorp-Warerite, Blue Circle and Wilsonart, the former George Reynolds worktop business in Shildon where he was logistics director and supply chain manager.

But there weren’t any political days. “I was never an activist in my youth,” he says. “I was a teenager in the late 1970s, going through all the strikes, I couldn’t understand why the union leaders thought they should run the country – that’s what politicians are elected for. That started my right-of-centre political leanings.”

Yet he didn’t joined the Conservative Party until 2010 when he dipped his toe in the electoral waters of Darlington’s Harrowgate Hill. He wasn’t successful, and work didn’t allow attempts for more until the dreaded r-word left him with time on his hands.

Darlington’s Labour Party filled that time by threatening to close the Crown Street library. Mr Howell joined the campaign to save it.

“My daughter read incessantly as a child and I thought it may give me something to do while I work out what to do next,” he says, “but sometimes when you walk into a thing like that, you can’t walk out again.

“It just didn’t feel right and, as an accountant, their numbers didn’t feel right, and then, from a political point of view, when they could see how unpopular it was, I couldn’t see why they didn’t back away from it – it is a metaphor for the Labour Party in modern times: they just didn’t listen.”

In 2017, as the blue tide started to turn, he raised an eyebrow by getting Aycliffe North and Middridge to elect him as their county councillor. “It made 10 of us – previously there had only been four of us – out of 126,” he says. “We do the right things for our constituents but in terms of driving county policy, you’re just an irritant around the back.”

Deep in Labour council territory, he felt his best chance of real influence – with the red Parliamentary majorities showing signs of weakening – was as an MP, but when Theresa May hurriedly called her ill-fated election in 2017, he couldn’t persuade the voters of Sunderland South to choose him.

But in May 2019, not only did the Hummersknott ward in Darlington elect him but the Tories took control of the council for the first time in 30 years, catapulting him into the cabinet with the leisure portfolio.

“It felt very surreal,” he says. “I could never have dreamt when I started with the library that two-and-a-half years later, I’d be in the cabinet making decisions about it.”

The Cabinet brief lasted only six months as he stood down to fight his home seat of Sedgefield when Boris Johnson persuaded Labour to agree to a suicidal “Get Brexit Done” election.

The Northern Echo: Still taken from PA video of Prime Minister Boris Johnson (left) pulling a pint with Sedgefield's new Conservative MP Paul Howell during a visit to Sedgefield Cricket ClubStill taken from PA video of Prime Minister Boris Johnson (left) pulling a pint with Sedgefield's new Conservative MP Paul Howell during a visit to Sedgefield Cricket Club

He was up against the 6,059 majority of Tony Blair’s successor, Phil Wilson, and in normal times he would not have stood a chance – even though his wife, Lillian, comes from a well known farming family in Bishopton in the constituency.

But these weren’t normal times.

The Northern Echo: Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks to supporters during a visit to see newly elected Conservative party MP for Sedgefield, Paul Howell during a visit to Sedgefield Cricket Club in County DurhamPrime Minister Boris Johnson speaks to supporters during a visit to see newly elected Conservative party MP for Sedgefield, Paul Howell during a visit to Sedgefield Cricket Club in County Durham

“I had hope,” he says. “The blue flag was flying pretty high, there was Phil’s anti-Brexit position, and Jeremy Corbyn was not well received.

“I was saying 10 days into the campaign that it was there to be won. People thought I had candidatitis, that I was reading the wrong story, but on the fourth day, we knocked a street in Aycliffe Village – 50 houses, we got answers from 26, two don’t knows, one Labour and the rest Conservative. I’d never had a street so positive.

“A week later, I knocked this door in Cornforth, the chap said ‘yeah I’m voting Conservative, I’m not voting for that idiot Corbyn’.

“About half-an-hour later, the same guy walks past me and says ‘how’s it going?’. I said ‘I’m just not finding Labour voters’, and he said ‘I’m not surprised – and I’m a Labour councillor’ and walked off.”

The Northern Echo: Piper Steve Wright with Councillor Joe Makepeace, MP Paul Howell and his wife Lillian HowellPiper Steve Wright with Councillor Joe Makepeace, MP Paul Howell and his wife Lillian Howell

Mr Howell was, though, a remain voter in the 2016 referendum. “It got me some strong challenges during the campaign, but I am a democrat and the vote said leave – it is a dangerous route not to follow that through,” he says. “Now I’m celebrating the end of uncertainty and the start of a brave new era.”

On polling day, it was not held against him.

“I walked into the count at Spennymoor and all six counting stations had me in front, but there was a pile of boxes still waiting to be opened,” he remembers. “I walked over expecting them to be the Trimdons and Fishburn, but it was Middleton St George, Hurworth, Piercebridge – all the villages around Darlington that are held by Conservative councillors. I was never going to be worried after that.”

The Northern Echo: Paul Howell, Sedgefield MP. Picture: Sarah CaldecottPaul Howell, Sedgefield MP. Picture: Sarah Caldecott

Not only did he secure a 4,513 majority, but the 12.71 per cent swing from Labour to Conservative in Sedgefield was beaten in the North-East only by the astonishing 15.46 per cent swing that turned Redcar Tory. Mr Johnson was so impressed that he immediately flew to Sedgefield and yomped triumphantly around the cricket club which had once been Mr Blair’s wicket.

“Sedgefield is a psychological thing,” says Mr Howell. “At its peak, Blair had 25,000 majority. Now I have a 4,500 majority. To me, that change is an opportunity – the party is so interested in this seat that we have more chance of getting the things we want.”

The victorious visit to Sedgefield marks the zenith, so far, of Mr Howell’s amazing four year meteoric journey.

“It is hard to comprehend,” he says, still open mouthed. “How did it happen?

“Being in the House of Commons is awe-inspiring, but you’ve got to be yourself. My tagline was ‘listening to the people of Sedgefield’ and that’s what I want do: listen to them and be their voice down there.

“We here in the north have a blue line to the top of the party. It is now up to the party whether it listens to that blue line, and I am absolutely confident they will.”

However, politics is incredibly volatile at the moment – that’s why Sedgefield elected its first Conservative MP since 1931, that’s why Richmond MP Rishi Sunak was a junior housing minister seven months ago but now holds the second most important office of state.

“I was in the queue in the Commons café with my tray and I looked behind me and there was Ed Miliband and just behind him was Theresa May,” says Mr Howell. “How their worlds have changed. My trajectory might have got me where it has, I don’t expect to go much higher and it could easily go back down, but to be given the opportunity and the trust is just a great privilege.”