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He was once England’s youngest councillor and for a time the youngest sitting MP. But Andrew Gwynne’s political ambition was plagued by periods of damaging mental ill health.

Now aged 44, Labour’s campaigns co-ordinator and one of the party’s most senior figures gives his first interview discussing his experience of depression in an attempt to reach out to others who may be suffering too.

“Men and particularly young men have got to understand they are not alone,” says Gwynne when we meet in his Westminster office. “It can affect all of us, irrespective of age, gender, social class and background.”

Gwynne says that at many points in his 23-year career in politics he just tried to put a “brave face” on.

Indeed it would be impossible to tell that this key member of Jeremy Corbyn’s team has on occasion given himself a pep talk before facing the cameras or speaking in the Commons. A heated row with Boris Johnson live on Sky News during the 2017 general election became one of the memorable media moments of the campaign.

Should there be a snap general election, Gwynne will be the man who will manage the party’s campaign.

On coping with the frontline of politics, he says: “You just need a quiet moment to yourself to get into the headspace of what you need to do and sometimes it is mentally exhausting.

“I am fine at it now, but I did go through a stage where it was difficult to speak in Parliament.”

In 1996, at 21, Gwynne became England’s youngest councillor, on Tameside council in Greater Manchester. In 2005 he was elected MP for Denton and Reddish in the city, becoming the youngest in the Commons at the time.

He lives in the constituency with his wife Allison, 44, and has three children, James, 21, William, 19, and Maisie, 17. Later this year he will become a grandfather for the first time.

He takes medication to manage his condition and has had two rounds of counselling on the NHS.

The death of his mother from ovarian cancer in 1994, when he was 19, has haunted him throughout his adult life. He and his father had to make the agonising decision to end her treatment and he witnessed her final moments as she suffered incredible pain on a hospital bed.

Two years later his uncle, whom he describes as an “older brother”, committed suicide. His father’s late sister Sue was a heroin addict and alcoholic who was jailed for a time, but eventually became clean and worked as a volunteer in the drugs and alcohol service.

“So there is mental ill health in the family,” he says, before explaining that no one ever talked about it, which is a reason he wants to speak out. “I want to do this so my children understand,” he adds.

Gwynne finally sought help in 2010, following a long period of physical ill health. He had become extremely unwell, feeling exhausted and blacking out, owing to an undiagnosed salt deficiency. Then he had a pulmonary embolism, a blood clot on the lung, collapsing at Euston station as he tried to get back to London for a three-line whip vote.

“I got to the top of the stairs that go down to the taxi rank and all I remember is from the waist down my legs just disappeared. I had no feeling whatsoever and I felt every single one of those steps as my head skidded all the way along the long walkway and crashed against one of the illuminated advertising hoardings.

“I still got into the taxi, still got into the Commons on time.

“In your thirties you nearly die, leaving your family behind. That was really difficult to come to terms with. I suppose some of my mental ill health started many moons before I collapsed, but that’s what broke the shell.”

Finally deciding to take medication for depression was hard to accept, “because it’s an admission you need pills”. He now takes the maximum dosage of citalopram and believes it has made a significant difference.

He remembers being mocked on College Green by Conservative MPs and journalists over Labour’s chances on the day the 2017 general election was called. He bursts into laughter remembering an LBC journalist asking: “Mr Gwynne, why are you so cheery when you are 25 per cent behind the Tories?” He recalls: “I just said, ‘It’s the pills not the polls,’ and everybody started laughing, and I said, ‘That wasn’t a joke. I was being serious. It is the pills and not the polls!’” However, it’s not until today that he has fully explained the context behind that comment.

He is undaunted by colleagues who have cautioned against him speaking out about his mental health, concerned that it would be exploited as a weakness by his opponents.

“It’s normal and that’s what we’ve got to get around to people,” he says. “If you’re feeling low, talk about it because you’ll be quite surprised that other people very close to you have probably been in that place. They might even be in that place at the same time.

“The more you talk about it, the more it becomes normal.”