The skies over East Kent’s chalk downs are vast.
The villages above the white cliffs, with their brick-and-flint houses and low-steepled churches, are small-c conservative places.
East Kent, which I used to represent in the European Parliament, is wary, bolshie, patriotic and self-reliant.
Yet the voters of Guston, Kingsdown and St Margaret’s-at-Cliffe – three handsome villages clustered near the beach from which cross-Channel swimmers set out – are now represented by a Green councillor.
How did that happen? Well, our first-past-the-post voting system can throw up curious results. On Thursday, the Green candidate got 28.8 per cent of the vote, the Reform candidate 27.5
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