When 18-year-old Megan McGowan told her family she was a Conservative, it was much harder than when she came out as bisexual. Megan’s parents had been completely fine with her sexual orientation. Her mother, Linda, sent her a text: “Your father and I would never judge you, or anything you do. Unless you become a Tory or a mass murderer. Well, even then we probably wouldn't judge you.” A year later, when she broke the news of her political sympathies to Linda, Megan remembered that "probably". The two of them were sitting in the front room of their council house in Donnington, Shropshire, eating pasta for dinner. “Mum, I think I'm a Tory,” Megan said. Linda, 57, a home care assistant, tried to process this. Her own father had never forgiven her for failing to turn out to vote in the 1979 general election, the first year she was eligible. He had lost his job under a Tory government when the local steelworks closed, and always held Linda personally responsible for the rise of Margaret Thatcher.

Linda had stayed true to Labour ever since, and so had her husband Kevin, 63, an engineer. “Oh, your dad’s not going to be happy at all,” she told Megan. “He’s going to be very annoyed.” Growing up, Megan had always assumed she was Labour, because her parents were Labour. The family would all watch Have I Got News For You together, and afterwards Linda and Kevin would tell her Labour were the good guys, while the Tories only cared about the rich. Before the 2015 general election, Megan joined the Labour Party. She was 16 and it hadn’t occurred to her that she might support any other. She stayed up to watch Ed Miliband’s party crash to defeat even though she had a GCSE physics exam the next day. In the wake of Labour’s loss, though, Megan started to re-think her allegiances. She went to watch a party leadership hustings in Birmingham where Jeremy Corbyn spoke. She wasn’t impressed.

I thought, yes, he's a nice man. But I could never vote for him, and if he was leader he would be a terrible one.”

When she shared this opinion on Twitter, Megan found herself being trolled. “It was, you know, get out of my party, Tory scum, Red Tory, you're a traitor, eff off and join the Tories.” Once the leadership results were declared, Megan thought: “I can’t do this any more.” The Labour Party didn’t feel like a welcoming place, so she quit.

She started reading Thatcher’s autobiography and liked what she discovered. The former prime minister’s emphasis on thrift reminded Megan of the values she had been brought up with.

Coming from a working-class background we were taught very early on that money does not grow on trees and you need to really watch your bank account and you need to keep an eye on your budgets.”

It was the EU referendum that finally brought home to Megan that she was a Tory. She had supported Remain, and found herself feeling sorry to see David Cameron resign and George Osborne face the sack. Their brand of socially liberal conservatism, she now realised, echoed her own, and she feared it was now at risk. “That made me think: ‘Well, there's something to defend here, isn't there? I might as well as grit my teeth and say: Yeah, I'm a Conservative.’” This put Megan out of step with her age group. Among 18 and 19-year-olds, YouGov found Labour had a 47-point lead over the Tories. On the other hand, the same study found the Conservatives performed best among C2, or skilled working-class voters, of which there are many in Donnington. Days later, Megan broke the news to her mum. But she wasn’t ready to tell her dad. Instead, she started dropping hints. She’d sit reading her Thatcher book and make approving comments about it. Or Prime Minister’s Questions would come on television, and she’d say she agreed with what Theresa May had just said. Eventually, the penny dropped.

My dad is a reasonable man, and so he respected it.”