I’m disappointed that the press analysis of the Conservatives’ massive defeat at the hands of the Lib-Dems in the recent Chesham and Amersham by-election explains it purely and simply in terms of the comfortable middle classes’ concerns about local property prices. I’d rather hoped that it might have something to do with Brexit, Johnson, the authoritarian turn of his government, his Covid-19 response, and his general silliness. The good folk of Chesham and Amersham are after all more likely to be well educated than the Northerners who voted the other way in the by-election before this: enough to be able to ‘see through’ Boris; and for that reason will have voted for a party – the only one, I think – which is unambiguously against Brexit, and also – its other advantage – not tarred with ‘socialism’, which is always likely to frighten the horses in Buckinghamshire. One of the major dividers in the 2016 Brexit referendum, apart from age (oldies pro, youngsters anti), was by education, with the university-educated more likely to have voted ‘Remain’. (Unless of course they were only educated in the ‘Classics’.) I was hoping that this might have been reflected in this latest election, with intelligence – or at least education – overcoming the age and class factors. But apparently not. All the Amershamers were concerned about was their own NIMBY self-interest. That is, if the commentators are right.