She tries to sum up the feeling of becoming MP for her hometown of Wigan while the future of the country hangs in the balance: "It feels like nothing and everything is happening all at once."
"Focusing on the constituency is what most people are doing," she claims, like the new girl at school intent on not getting anyone into trouble. "As a new MP the main priority for most is to find a desk."
She secured the traditionally Labour stronghold with a 10,500 majority, albeit with a 7.7 per cent swing to the Conservatives.
Nandy has spent her first few days in Parliament squatting in the office of Tony Lloyd, chair of the parliamentary Labour Party, in her search for permanent residence. But she is still struggling to find her way around. "I managed to find a desk but also managed to lose it this morning," she confesses. "I had to get somebody from the security team to escort me to it."
At 30, Nandy is one of the youngest MPs, the first female representative for Wigan and clearly ambitious. She has been a vigorous campaigner for children and young people at The Children's Society and youth homelessness charity Centrepoint.
Her experiences in the sector have convinced her that housing is one of the biggest problems facing the nation. "I see it so much in the work I've done with children — the impact poor housing has on educational outcomes. It's obviously highly linked to poverty and often at the root of family conflict," she states.
Nandy is eager to see the commitment to ending child poverty by 2020 retained, having argued that it is a scandal that four million children are growing up in poverty in the country. She has also pledged to fight to save Sure Start children's services from cuts.
But she believes the top priority must be to improve the skills of young people and opportunities for them to go to university and into employment. The alternative, she warns, is a return to the high youth unemployment of the 1980s that underpinned a generation of workless households.
Conspicuously absent from her agenda is a pledge to campaign to end the detention of children in immigration removal centres - an issue on which she campaigned fervently in her previous professional life.
"I'm still very committed to that. Labour and Conservatives are in the same place now, which is a desire to see an end to child detention but no firm commitment beyond that, which is disappointing," she admits.
The day after our interview, it emerges that the Lib Dems have secured their manifesto wish to end the detention of children for immigration purposes in one coalition agreement with the Tories.
Nandy insists that detaining children in prison-like conditions is morally wrong. It is an ineffective way of removing illegal immigrants, she says, creating a "climate of fear" and discouraging families from co-operating with authorities.
"In the current economic climate it doesn't make sense to spend £130 a day per child locking them up and causing that amount of damage."
On all issues, Nandy vows to "challenge the prevailing party line" where necessary, but admits she will have to pick her fights. "There are times when you just have to deal with the fact that you have lost the argument within your party."
But she promises to keep pushing the Labour Party and the next government to develop an effective but humane immigration and asylum system. "I'd like to see us getting rid of legislation that makes children forcibly destitute, separating them from their parents.
"And I'd like to see us dealing with asylum and immigration claims quicker," she says. "Humanity is the element that has been missing from successive regimes for the past 20 to 30 years."
BACKGROUND: THE ROAD BACK TO WIGAN
- Born in Wigan, Nandy graduated in politics from Newcastle University in 2001. She also has a Masters in public policy from Birkbeck College, London
- After graduating, she worked as a researcher for Labour MP Neil Gerrard who was focused on tackling housing and immigration
- In 2003, Nandy joined youth homelessness charity Centrepoint as policy researcher
- In 2005, Nandy joined The Children's Society as policy adviser, until her election as Wigan's MP
- Nandy was a local councillor in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham from 2006 to 2010
