It is a pity because Lord Heseltine could have offered uniquely useful advice to the re-branded One Nation Conservative Prime Minister as he seeks to embrace his new MPs from constituencies, many in northern England, that traditionally voted Labour.

Dispatched to Liverpool after the 1981 Toxteth riots in his role as Environment Secretary, Heseltine became at his own insistence minister for Merseyside. As such, he persuaded Margaret Thatcher not to give up on the city — as some, including the then Chancellor, Geoffrey Howe, were advocating — and became its champion.

He helped to drum up investment not just for a selection of high-profile projects, including an international garden festival, Tate Liverpool and the regeneration of the Albert Docks, but for jobs and decent housing. He persuaded business from inside and outside the region that Liverpool had a future, while in London, he was grudgingly praised for managing to cut through Whitehall bureaucracy and get departments to work together on his Liverpool projects.

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Since then, Heseltine’s Liverpool phase has received only intermittent attention, not least perhaps because it does not sit well with the prevailing image of heartless Thatcherism. Yet Liverpool did not entirely forget and he received the freedom of the city in 2012 — regarded as a quite remarkable gesture from a staunchly Labour council to a Tory peer. But there was criticism at the time and since, in particular that after the initial 12 months London’s interest started to wane, that more junior ministers and civil servants were sent to meetings, and that the initiative lost steam.

The ups and downs are well charted in Batting for the Poor, the just-published biography of the then Anglican Bishop of Liverpool, David Sheppard. And there were plenty of misgivings and disputes along the way.

Without Heseltine, though, it is more than likely that the city would have been left to its decline and that any regeneration would have been much longer in coming, if it ever did. The point is that Margaret Thatcher was open to persuasion; the Government’s purse-strings were partially untied, and having a convinced, articulate and well-connected champion in central government made a difference. This is a precedent that Boris Johnson should heed, with or without direct counsel from Lord Heseltine.

If something similar is attempted with the “new blue” constituencies, it will be crucial to avoid any impression of neo-colonialism; any envoy has to be careful not to behave as any sort of viceroy. But the benefit of having named and recognisable champions taking responsibility for long-term regeneration, people with a sense of mission who can serve as champions of their designated town or area, identify the opportunities and unlock the funds, cannot be contested.

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As Lord Heseltine looks at it now — and said at a conference in London earlier this year — he sees his work in Liverpool as some of the most important of his career, not only in its own right, but in the example it set for renaissances elsewhere.

Nonetheless, that initial intervention was crucial in making Liverpool what it is today. Its city centre and the regenerated docks area are flourishing. The waterfront is as sparkling and distinctive as that of any erstwhile port city in the world. If you fly in to Liverpool, you arrive at John Lennon airport; it has capitalised with huge success — though some might feel ad nauseam — on the Beatles and their global fame, adding £82m a year to the local economy.

When I visited Liverpool at the very end of November, the central streets thronged with shoppers (the proof of their seriousness in their bulging bags); there were tourists; hotels were full. The blight described by so many reporters on pre-election profiles of the places where they grew up — John Lichfield’s report on Stoke-on-Trent being a classic of its kind — and reinforced for me by a visit I paid last year to Nottingham, where I spent the first 12 years of my life, does not apply to the main areas of Liverpool.

Where so many cities have approved insensitive redevelopment that seems only to have made incipient decline worse, Liverpool managed a massive, largely low-rise and outdoor redevelopment of its central commercial area that has brought the downtown back to life.

Politically, Liverpool has also held somewhat aloof from the regional pack. Along with Manchester, it was one of few northern cities to vote Remain (58 to 42 per cent) in the 2016 EU referendum. And in last week’s general election there were no defections to the Conservatives; none at all. All of its 14 constituencies remained faithful to Labour. Greater Manchester, in contrast, saw five seats change hands from Labour to Tory.

A recent study, one that made a bit of a stir in journalistic circles at least (UnHerd critique here ), suggested that Liverpool’s political exceptionalism, and specifically its vote for Remain in 2016, might be explained in part by the city’s 30-year long boycott of The Sun newspaper that followed its coverage of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster. The academics’ thesis was that the absence of the eurosceptic Sun, and the shift of many of its readers to the pro-EU Mirror, might have helped to convert what had been a euro-sceptic city.

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Among the flaws in their argument would be that Manchester voted even more strongly for Remain (60-40), that as a strong Labour-supporting city, Liverpool may have followed the party in its shift from being eurosceptic at the first, 1975 EU referendum to becoming pro-EU from the Kinnock and Blair years.

More to the point it’s possible that as a major port city, which has now graduated from cargo to cruises, Liverpool looks outward in a way that many cities elsewhere in the country might not. At least as significant may be the Irish dimension, which not only gives the city some of its distinctive character, but also a special relationship with the island of Ireland, both through direct ferry connectiions and continuing family links.

What is more, its successful regeneration, along with Liverpudlians’ fierce sense of their own identity, may have encouraged its voters to take a more positive view of the present than their fellow-countrymen in the Brexit-voting towns left behind.

This is another reason why Liverpool should perhaps be recognised as the current exception that could prove a future rule. If Boris Johnson is serious about his One Nation ambitions, and if he wants all those new votes he won last week to be more than just “lent” for the short-term purpose of “getting Brexit done”, then he could do worse than mobilise a team of special envoys to fan out across the country with the task of adapting the Liverpool model for elsewhere.

Of course, that could present something of a personal challenge for Johnson, whose history of relations with Liverpool has not been plain sailing. Most famously, when editor of The Spectator, he was dispatched there on the orders of Tory leader Michael Howard to apologise for an article in the magazine that said Liverpudlians liked to wallow in self-pity.

Then again, how better to start mending fences not just with Liverpool — presenting it as a template for successful regeneration — but with the erstwhile minister, now Tory grandee, who staked his personal and political reputation on the possibility that it could be done.

“It’s been the hardest year of my life,” said Liam, 41, whose wife is from Chile. So you might presume it would be easy to predict how this struggling retailer would be voting? But no, not in this bizarre election. For, to my amazement — not least since we were standing in the constituency of one of the best-known Brexiteers and Liam believes Boris Johnson to be “a bit of a buffoon” — he told me he would be voting Tory on Thursday.

“It’s time to get Brexit sorted. I’m a Remainer but I run a business that relies on imports from abroad and we have got to get this done and dusted. I don’t want any more delay to this process that has made me suffer for so long.”

Our chat on a chilly December evening highlights the unpredictability of this political struggle as Brexit divides the country, reshapes parties and shakes the electoral kaleidoscope. Few constituencies show this better than Esher and Walton, where a recent poll suggested the Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, holds just a 5% lead over the Liberal Democrats, despite winning a 23,298 majority two years ago.

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This slice of suburban Surrey should be bedrock Britain for the Tories: the sort of place a donkey wearing a blue rosette would get elected. But as Johnson pivots his party towards disgruntled Labour voters in the Midlands and North, might they lose this seat stuffed with wealthy commuters in their southern heartland?

Monica Harding, the Liberal Democrat candidate, is convinced she is set for victory. “I really, really think I will win,” she said when we met in The Wheatsheaf pub. “People are really cross about Brexit. Most accepted the referendum result and then backed the Tories in 2017, expecting them to deliver it neatly. Now they see it has been a complete shambles.” It seemed significant, also, that Raab is keeping his head down and his team not letting journalists join them out campaigning. The Foreign Secretary, however, is optimistic of retaining his seat. “I am not sitting here biting my finger nails,” he told one friend.

It was not hard to find people who have deserted the Tories in Esher and Walton, a seat that strongly backed Remain and is home to 10,000 businesses. Yet while the curse of Brexit clings to this constituency, just as in all 649 others in this wretched election called to break the deadlock at Westminster, other big issues are bubbling beneath the surface. And not just the obvious ones of crime, hospitals, and schools causing concerns across the country. Changes taking place in the spillover suburbs that surround London present longer-term challenges. And that is why this wealthy heart of Surrey presents a warning to the Conservatives.

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This is a place I used to knew well, having lived in Oxshott for the first 17 years of my life before my family moved to Sussex on the day Margaret Thatcher became prime minister. It was a firmly middle-class village set amid the prosperous Surrey commuter belt, an oasis of suburban middle-class dreams close to the capital filled with golf courses and tennis clubs. Men in pin-striped suits and bowler hats packed the trains to London in the morning, then teenagers filled them later to escape the embrace of cosy community and a stifling sense of conformity. There was an old-fashioned grocery store in the village, parties in the village hall — and I can still recall the excitement when the first Chinese and Indian restaurants arrived in the area.

The grocery store is still there, although now rebranded. Inside, I found Nish Patel, its 29-year-old boss who took over the shop with his brother earlier this year. This affable man, born in the Indian state of Gujarat, told me how he arrived in Britain 10 years ago, speaking no English and had already run another shop nearby. As he explained his plans to improve the store, I reflected how Patel embodied the energetic and entrepreneurial spirit of immigration. Yet, unexpectedly, he turned out to be a keen Brexiteer. “I am going to spend my life in this country so I want it to be safe,” he explained. “We need to know who is coming in and out. We have a lot of burglaries here.”

The streets remain tidy, the lawns clipped, the woods by the station full of friendly dog-walkers — but this is an area that has changed fast. There has been the usual suburban churn as old people move on and young families move in, seeking more space in homes and often a sanctuary from urban life in London. Many are from migrant backgrounds, like the Patels. I recall five years ago a Surrey councillor telling me there were 30 languages spoken in neighbouring Mole Valley, with ethnic minorities making up one in seven pupils in some primary schools. There is a mosque in Dorking, just down the road from the setting for that ultimate 70s suburban sitcom, The Good Life. What would Margot have said?

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Statistics show that, unlike Patel, most ethnic minorities do not support the Tories. Yet this slice of Surrey has also become spectacularly wealthy. It is now filled with foreign billionaires, hedge fund chiefs and famous sports stars — including Chelsea players and their Russian owner, since the club’s training ground is in nearby Cobham. It is little surprise to find a study revealed Elmbridge pays the highest income tax in Britain. When I located my former home, it seemed almost the only one on the road that had survived rather than being replaced by a massive post-modern palace. At one neighbouring property, an interior design company was hanging Christmas tree lights on a tree by the front door. A worker said they charge £198 for the service — more than one-third of median weekly disposable income for British households.

Many residents live behind big gates and banks of cameras, corroding any sense of real community. “I canvass sometimes speaking on the entry phone to someone I can see at a window,” said one Lib Dem activist. Yet there are homeless people living in nearby woods, former council houses sell for seven-figure sums and far too few new houses are being built in a constituency that is almost two-thirds protected by Green Belt restrictions. These kinds of issues trouble even Tory voters and are storing up problems, whatever happens on Brexit.

I met Gareth Hughes, an 84-year-old former civil servant and oil engineer who has lived in Oxshott for half a century, by the village shops. Once we would have been almost neighbours — but he said he has seen big changes since my time. “We had one house opposite us knocked down, a family lived there, and then it was knocked down again and made bigger,” he said, adding that his own two children had been forced by high prices to live in other parts of the south-east. “This area was always prosperous but it has become much more wealthy and now none of our children can afford to live here.”

As this thoughtful man who once worked under Michael Heseltine said, what is the point of creating ‘affordable’ housing when the definition – 80% of average local market rates — puts it out of most people’s range? One study found Elmbridge, where there has been a sharp fall in numbers of younger people owning their homes and average properties cost almost £600,000, to be the hardest place outside London to get a foot on the housing ladder. Hughes has seen the legacy of such change with a weakening of communal institutions such as clubs and charity events — and while backing both Brexit and the Tories, takes a dim view of modern politicians. “They don’t seem to get anything done. They have been squabbling over Brexit and everything else seems to have been sidelined.”

This is probably the single point that unites the country — and many people in Esher hold Raab responsible as a key player behind the parliamentary paralysis. “No, I’m not voting for him ever again,” said one well-spoken man, declining to be named. “They can stuff their Brexit and the lot of them, they fucked up our country.”

Another middle-aged woman refused at first to tell me how she voted on Brexit after almost losing one of her best friends over the issue. “I’ve known her since we were 10. We are in such a sorry state of affairs, so I pledged never again to tell anyone how I voted.” Eventually she whispered that she was a Leaver on the basis I would not identify her.

A few minutes later I met Hugh Monro, a firm Remainer from Cornwall, who was attending a local school governors’ meeting but expressed the widespread despair over Westminster with unusual eloquence. “It is a pantomime,” he said. “If it wasn’t so important it would all be very funny. Instead we have a farce, written by Kafka but performed by the Marx Brothers.”

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Metamorphosis meets Duck Soup? Certainly some prominent politicians have been transformed by the Brexit debacle — including Ian Taylor, former chairman of the Conservative Group for Europe and Raab’s predecessor in this seat for 23 years. “Sadly, I no longer recognise the Conservative Party as it is today,” he said recently.

Such is the perplexing state of political flux. His new political party, the Lib Dems, claim to be attracting many richer voters who were nervous about inadvertently letting a tax-grabbing Marxist into Downing Street but now feel emboldened to back them after Jeremy Corbyn’s dismal campaign. Almost all Lib Dem voters told me they disliked their party’s stance on revoking Brexit. The Tories meanwhile, said they were picking up support in poorer parts, reflecting their focus on struggling citizens in the Midlands and North. “Voters are very negative about Corbyn,” said one source. “And while this constituency voted 58% Remain, that does not mean they do not respect how the rest of the country voted and that Boris managed to get a deal.”

London’s sprawling suburbia takes in chunks from four counties. Yet it is Surrey that best symbolises the great Brexit divide. The county is home to 11 Tory MPs who include some of the most prominent figures on both sides, from Leavers such as Raab and Michael Gove, through to Remainers such as former chancellor Philip Hammond and Sam Gyimah, who defected to the Liberal Democrats shortly after standing for the leadership. Seven months ago, the Tories lost their grip on four councils after a drubbing in local elections.

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Brexit is not the only reason that southern seats could tilt from the Tories. As young families move in, Lib Dems surge after partially recovering from their post-coalition backlash, and Johnson shifts his party towards socially-conservative northern voters. “There is a general feeling that public services are not working for them and the Conservative brand has been tarnished,” said James Johnson, former Number Ten strategist who ran polling for Theresa May. “In future elections, this is going to be problematic. They are going for a short-term win that could have long-term repercussions.” He added that high-profile politicians such as Raab and Iain Duncan Smith in his suburban Essex seat were most at risk from tactical voting.

Even the most devout Corbynista would accept Esher and Walton is not their natural terrain — although I did find one possible Labour voter. “I’m fed up with the whole thing really,” said Katy Nursey, 35, an interior designer parking in Oxshott with her infant daughter Ava. “I work in London and see so many homeless people on the streets. It’s just awful.” She was worried also about the health service after hearing friends and family members complain about bad experiences. Later I met a Polish dental nurse who was selling her house to return home after 10 years living in Britain — one more sign of the intensifying staff crisis in health and social care.

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Jane Drown, 60, a former management consultant who is backing the Lib Dems, said many local voters like her would happily pay a bit more in tax to boost public services but they despair over the extremism of both main parties. “Look at all these Four-Wheel Drive cars on the roads when there are people sleeping rough,” she said. “The big issue is inequality. Many people want to redress the balance but will not vote for Corbyn, who seems so old-fashioned and scares the shit out of this affluent middle-class area.”

I met her in a Costa cafe, shortly after talking to an Esher shop worker who could no longer afford to visit the local cinema — the same one that I used to cycle to on my Raleigh sports bike to see films such as Jaws and Star Wars with friends — following its makeover by the upmarket Everyman chain. “This is a constituency with two halves,” said Drown. “There are all those wealthy people in their gated developments but there are also people really struggling to make ends meet on benefits or low incomes. You need a lot of money to live here.”

Who knows if this constituency will provide the “Portillo moment” of the 2019 election, when a high-profile politician loses their job before the cruel glare of cameras at their count? Yet for someone who grew up amid the comfortable certainties of this area, it seems incredible to even suggest the Tory tradition might be under threat in this slab of rock-solid Surrey. It is one more sign of our political fluidity as tectonic plates shift beneath Westminster — and the ramifications go far deeper than current tribal battles. As I talked over coffee with Drown, she spoke with passion about the area’s growing wealth, its glaring inequalities, its gated homes — and its hidden underbelly of grafting people and grinding poverty. “Esher,” she said, “is a metaphor for the country.”