The Lib Dems represent one big shrug, so why did Conservative utopia Mickleham fall for it, asks Simon Clarke

The Running Horses in Mickleham, Surrey is a dream of a pub. Beer in hand, you sit in its shady garden surveying the wondrous St Michael and All Angels Church. Happily, the Church is open to the public, so you can venture into its cool, flagstoned calm. From the elaborately carved pulpit to the Civil War banners to the grave of the former Canadian PM Richard Bennett, anyone who loves churches, history and politics (and who doesn’t?!) is somewhere close to heaven. The surrounding village is a cluster of beautiful homes, grazing horses and beautiful trees, now burgeoning with fruit.

Mickleham is nestled close to Leatherhead and Dorking in Surrey, and it’s hard to imagine somewhere that feels further from London’s appalling decline, lately embodied by Oxford Street being festooned in “Mind the........

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