T HE CONSTITUENCY of Warwick and Leamington was once known as the Garden of Eden, not because it is beautiful—though it is—but because it was the Conservative stronghold of Anthony Eden, who won the seat nine times over 34 years. The first Labour candidate ever fielded in the constituency was Daisy Greville, Countess of Warwick, who campaigned from the back seat of a Rolls-Royce in 1923, says Wyn Grant of Warwick University. Labour took the seat only in 1997, and held it until the end of the Blair-Brown era in 2010.

Few foresaw the victory of Labour’s Matt Western in 2017. “It wasn’t a surprise,” says Mr Western, who clinched the seat by 1,206 votes. “It was a shock.” In a constituency that backed Remain by 58% to 42% in the referendum of 2016, Brexit was the Tories’ undoing. The pattern was repeated in enough Tory-held seats to deprive Theresa May of her majority.

This time there are fears among anti-Brexit campaigners that the Remain vote could be fatally split, in Warwick and constituencies like it. Twenty seats in England that backed Remain by more than 55% have surmountable majorities of under 5,000. If enough Labour voters frustrated with Jeremy Corbyn’s neutrality on Brexit defect to the Lib Dems, many of those seats could go to the Tories. Yet a poll for The Economist by Survation suggests that, in Warwick at least, a certain amount of tactical voting is going on. The Lib Dem vote is up only five points on 2017, with Labour and the Tories as closely tied as they were last time (see chart). Voters seem to be organising themselves into Leave and Remain camps even in the absence of a formal pro- EU alliance.