Author: Matthew Pearce

n a dreary Saturday in the pristine Oxfordshire town of Henley-on-Thames, nearly 40 miles away from the standing ovations and gleeful commiserations of Kemi Badenoch’s leadership victory, news was beginning to trickle through of the new shape of the Conservative party. Just three months ago, the Tories were defeated here by the Liberal Democrats – until then, Henley had voted Conservative in every election since 1906. But peel back that thin yellow film and a deep blue concrete slab remains. This is a boat-rowing Tory heartland dressed in bunting, a wealthy area with a long history of conservatism (the constituency…