Hello and welcome to The Rundown, a podcast from Politics Home.

I'm your host, Alan Tolhurst, and this week we're continuing our series, introducing the political class of 2024 by profiling new MPs to look out for when the Commons returns next week.

Having spoken to a new Labour MP and a Conservative, this week we have Caroline Voden, who last month was elected as the new Liberal Democrat MP

for South Devon. Having been reduced to single figures just a few years ago and barely

in double figures of the last election, her party enjoyed its most successful election ever on

July 4th, winning 61 seats to end up with 72 MPs, moving firmly back into position as the third party in the

Commons. A former journalist in MEP will speak to Caroline about how she got involved in politics,

winning back the seat for the Lib Dems, they swept the so-called Blue Wall, Ed Davies campaign

antics, what it's like in those first few weeks in Parliament and what she hopes to achieve

in her time on the green benches. So, Caroline, thanks for coming on.

As I said, you were a former journalist starting in 1991.

You worked for the Reuters News Agency and had assignments kind of all over Europe.

Just talk us to you how you kind of first got involved in journalism.

Well, I loved modern languages at school.

So I went to university to read French and business studies. And after a few

weeks, I found business studies quite dull. So I changed my degree to French and economics,

not really knowing much about what that would entail. When it got to final year, there was the,

you know, the milk around all the employers coming to university. And I saw that Reuters were recruiting people who had languages and also had some knowledge

of economics, financial markets, that kind of thing.

And I hadn't really thought about being a journalist up until that point.

But then I thought, actually, that sounds really interesting.

And I applied for it.

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