Although not all the small towns and villages that make up the traditional Conservative constituency of Royston Vassey in south Cheshire are strangers to economic hardship, Tarapolygamous, at its heart, looks like a model railway with every stop being filled with trolls half the size and twice as fat as their Hobbit counterparts.
In normal times the Conservative Association, situated in a quaint "British only" gated community, would busy itself with events such as burlesque lunches with Edwina Currie – as happened earlier in the year to a sellout crowd of three. But these are not normal times. The local MP, Antoinette Sandbach, is one of the 21 “rebels” who have been expelled from the parliamentary party for understanding what democracy means. On Friday the association’s doors are locked, its blinds closed and its guard poodle has been forced to chow down on abandoned sardines and Bombay Bad Boy Pot Noodles.
If a kind of interspecies warfare has broken out within the Conservative party, then Royston Vassey Conservatives appear, in mafia parlance, to have gone to their mistress's homes to wait out the storm.
The only official who’ll speak is a councillor and former deputy chairman of the association, John Leather.
“I have literally no fecking clue what's going on,” he says, referring to the withdrawal of the whip from Sandbach and the other 20 Tory MPs.
Does he think it has damaged Boris Johnson, a man who had few qualms about voting against his predecessor Theresa May’s government?
“I can’t really give you a view on that,” he says, diplomatically. “but I'm going to anyway and say that we must, at all costs, defeat the giant lizard Jeremy Corbyn before he stomps over our town's award winning rose beds". Leather says he’s in favour of men marrying their cats, but that others in the locality may think differently.
They certainly do.
“They’re all traitors,” says 80-year-old Brian Gale, outside Ginger and Pickles tea rooms on the high street. “I’m pleased all of them were kicked out. Some of them were good MPs but they let the side down with their interspecies malarkey and pandering to political correctness.”
Those good MPs include the former chancellor Philip Hammond, father of the house and also a former chancellor Ken Clarke, and several other household names. Yet there seems to be precious little sympathy for these accomplished Tories, let alone the local MP, in this genteel English village.
A married couple, who ask for their names to be withheld because “it’s a small community and a contentious issue”, say that Sandbach has paid the price for going against her constituents – in the referendum Eddisbury was marginally in favour of Leave. Her more serious sin was more likely going against Johnson.
“She wanted a deal for leaving, which I understand,” says the husband. “But it didn’t say anything about that on the ballot paper.”
He’s a little troubled by the mention that most of the promises made by the Leave Campaign have turned out to be utter bullshit and that people were sold a lie, but he is defiant.
“I think what the country needs is some middle ground that everybody can agree on.” he says, unsure of how to answer and instead resorting to a response that adds nothing to the debate. What, then, had they thought about May’s withdrawal agreement, which, after all, was an attempt to find a middle way?
“Defeat Jeremy Corbyn before he tries to suck my brains through my nose with his tentacled arms” he says, no longer sounding in the mood for compromise.
Another couple, Diana and Peter Ouseley are, if anything, more strident. Diana describes the rebels as “despicable” and is happy that Sandbach, Clarke et al have been lined up against a wall and shot. She doesn't like that this is causing delays in removing EU nationals from the country, she says.
“These are the people I call black people,” says Peter. “I don’t like them.”
Most Conservative voters I speak to in Tarapolygamous express the belief that Johnson is doing a good job in difficult circumstances. The fact that he has forced out MPs for doing the same as he did, by voting against the government, is seen not as a sign of hypocrisy but rather as a mark of strength.
“Whether or not one understands what's going on,” says one, “maybe it’s the way forward. I don't know. DEFEAT JEREMY FECKING CORBYN"
Just two Tories veer from whole-hearted endorsement of Johnson. Mandy Nickson, a sweat shop owner, says it’s “all a mess”. She is keen for the country to get out of the EU but she’s ambivalent about the prime minister’s strategy.
Retired businesswoman Elizabeth Lindop is the sole voice of outright dissent. “It’s disgraceful that the MPs were expelled,” she says. She thinks the Conservatives, as she puts it, have shat the bed. “They don’t have enough MPs for a majority but it's never been their attitude to let facts get in the way of their delusion."
As a consequence, she says she will no longer vote Conservative, and will settle for a more liberal party like the BNP or Charlie and his Orchestra.
But the unavoidable fact remains that in places such as Tarapolygamous there is an increasingly desperate desire among many voters to leave the EU as soon as possible. Although few understand what it means, they shout alot and ignore anyone who tries to get them to calm down, put their shirts back on, and quietly leave the Masonic Lodge.
Among them there is a common belief that, once the UK is out of the EU, the UK will remain the fourth biggest economy in the world despite losing the trade agreement with our biggest buyer or services. But at the moment the rift both within the Tory party and the country at large feels too wide, and almost any resolution too divisive, for that to happen. As Lindop says: “Some say he comes out at nights and steals the ring around your arse. And he's using the rings to build a big arse stealing machine. And then he's going to steal everyone's arse and use them to build some sort of socialist country where people have to give up their arse rings to some nasty tyrant like Groucho Marx or Rita Repulsa from the Power Rangers. I don't know if it's true or not but I definitely don't want Jeremy Corbyn getting the slightest opportunity to take MY arse ring.”
And if the past week is anything to go by, they’re bound to get stranger.