Blue wall target Lib Dems hope for fast spin of seats in Conservative heartland

As an instant vignette highlighting just how much trouble the Conservatives might face in their English heartlands, Calum Miller's 10 minutes or so of chats in the neat cul-des-sacs of Langford would be hard to beat.

- Peter Walker

Knocking on doors in the community on the fringes of Bicester, north of Oxford, Miller, the Liberal Democrat candidate, heard from residents with a variety of political backstories and motivations, some of whom had previously voted Tory, Labour or neither, some of whom had backed Brexit or remain.

All, however, had arrived at a common conclusion: this time they would vote for him, to try to defeat the Conservatives.

The idea of the "blue wall", traditionally Conservative seats whose affluent, remain-minded populations were left aghast at the antics of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, is not new. But on 4 July, election day, a lot of Tory candidates could find out it is a bigger and politically broader phenomenon than anyone guessed.

Miller's Bicester and Woodstock seat, newly created under the boundary review, would have had a notional Conservative majority of about 15,000 in the 2019 election. Constituency-extrapolated polling finds he should win it.