AS a man of his conscience, David Michael felt he had to stand as a parliamentary candidate in Stroud to achieve the change he is so passionate about.

He founded The Free Public Transport Party to make a difference in Stroud and Westminster.

A keen athlete, 58-year-old David said that running is a metaphor for his life: “When I’m running a lot of the time I’m thinking, why am I doing this, it’s really painful, it’s really uncomfortable, I want to stop. Never again.

“And that applies to every project I do. I’m thinking how on earth did I get this idea, what did I do, this campaign included.”

So what lead him to run for MP? He wants free and frequent public transport fitted with Wi-Fi and toilets. He would ban first-class seating and would have car-free town centres.

Despite its one-dimensional name The Free Public Transport Party does have other policies as well.

David feels particularly guilty about prisons.

He said: “We throw 90,000 people a year into prisons and they’re invisible. It’s a bit similar to what we used to do with mental health patients.

“With prisoners we lock them away and it doesn’t work and it’s cruel. I wanted to make a stand on that.”

Free Transport Party policy is to close 95 per cent of prisons and to only incarcerate violent offenders.

Along with the radical justice policy, the party would have open borders – in stark contrast to Ukip’s policies which he says "are based on people’s fears and exacerbate them”.

The party would de-criminalise drugs and have licensed drug and alcohol sellers because it’s an “obvious” policy and “criminals will hate that because they’ll be out of a job”.

A builder himself, David, unlike other political candidates, is against building on brownfield sites. “These valuable sites should be made into green spaces, small pocket parks.

“The developer or owner should be given a land swap.”

His party would also invoke a strict Fair Pay, Fair Play trade rule, which would mean paying a living wage – £10 an hour – to workers outside the EU and making sure that their conditions and working hours are acceptable.

A gadget fan, David says that as a result he’ll have to sacrifice buying cheap gadgets but on the plus side “we’ll be able to manufacture in this country”.

So what of his support base? Has he managed to get people to commit to voting for him? Although he’s had much positive feedback he says the response often comes with a “but”. People don’t want to use their vote on him because they are concerned they need to vote tactically.

“There’s a sense in people not believing it’s possible,” said David. “People think we have great ideas but that they’re not really realistic.

“But everything we have in our society is based on someone’s vision, every building, the NHS, every invention is based on an idea in someone’s head.

“Until we have that idea and we write it down and we tell people about it, it won’t happen.

“So imagine the unbelievable and it will happen.”

In a marginal constituency like Stroud, David thinks he could get some traction. “We’ve got an opportunity to push radical politics.”