Welcome to FT Politics, a weekly podcast on what's happening in Westminster from the Financial Times.

I'm Sebastian Payne.

We're into the slower political season, supposedly, so we're doing something a little different.

Over the next couple of weeks weeks I'm sitting down with some

interesting political figures who I think will be shaping the political

weather for the rest of 2018. Some of them you might be familiar with, some of them

possibly not. Our guest this week is Nick Bowes the conservative

MP for Grantham and Stamford in Lincolnshire. He began his political career

on Westminster City Council before founding the influential modernizing think tank policy exchange.

He entered the House of Commons in 2010

and worked his way up the political ladder to become housing and later skills

minister.

After Theresa May became Prime Minister in the summer of 2016, he

returned to the backbenchers and once again has become an influential voice on

the modernizing wing of the Conservative Party. So Nick, thank you very much for coming

to the FT for this

chat. As a backbencher, what does the summer break mean for you that obviously

parliaments in recess but there's still a bit of news going around, things to have

an opinion on? Yes, I think it has changed because I think people are much

more in touch now almost wherever they are they're in touch in terms of receiving

information. I actually delete Twitter from my phone and iPad during

recess because I think it's a great source of sanity to have a bit of a Twitter break.

...