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Brexit in the shires
NICK WRIGHT finds most Remainers ready to accept the core criticisms of the EU - but unable to join the dots and support Leave

ALL politics is, in the final analysis, local. Andrew Bowles was the Tory leader of Swale Borough Council on the North Kent coast until he was booted out by Faversham’s electors.

He achieved notoriety when the Tories briefly suspended him after he tweeted support for Stephen Yaxley-Lennon — alias “Tommy Robinson” — before reinstating him to lead the doomed Tory campaign in the council elections.

Faversham is a smallish town on the Thames estuary which has carried out a comprehensive cull of its council which has, with the exception of an occasional Labour or Lib Dem and a clutch of mostly progressive-minded independents, been a Conservative fiefdom ever since the brewing and shipbuilding town lost much of its industrial base.

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