Reader’s note: In print, this article appeared in four parts over the course of the week.

I GREW up in Harston, five miles south of central Cambridge down the A10. A little tranquil village with a population of less than 2,000 with meadows, a school, village hall, pub, petrol station and post office-cum-store. And a village in an affluent part of Britain that has both a Porsche centre and a Ducati motorbike shop.

Harston has a gross disposable household income of £27,031 — compared to a national average of £20,425. The village is part of South Cambridgeshire, a constituency that in 2019 elected Conservative Anthony Browne to Parliament — who voted with his party in the House on all but one occasion out of 982 — and that has for many years been a Tory stronghold.