Stevenage, a commuter town north of London, exemplified an era of British politics dominated by two parties. Its mix of rural lanes, smart suburbs and scruffy estates make it a microcosm of England, and an electoral bellwether. Since 1974, whichever party won this parliamentary constituency also won the keys to Downing Street. And victory, the old model dictated, lay in a tranche of voters swinging between the Conservatives and Labour like a pendulum. In 2024 Labour Together, a partisan think-tank, coined “Stevenage Woman” for a genus of practically minded suburbanites who disdain “grand abstractions and vague promises”.