The local campaign was defined by the sleazy fall of the Tory MP Peter Bone, and the surreally stupid decision to make his girlfriend the prospective Conservative replacement, both of which spoke of a party in a state of awful decay; nationally, the sense of a government gripped by failure and infighting completed the picture.
The town, population 54,000, is just under an hour by train from London. Its history of offering a new start to people from the capital goes back to rehousing schemes in the 1960s and 70s, but the latest blow-ins are people who have bought a new generation of private flats and houses, marketed to those priced out of metropolitan living.
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