The champagne had scarcely had time to go flat, following Tory celebrations of their 2019 general election victory, when the government realised it faced a brand-new, intractable dilemma: how could it devise policies that would appeal both to traditional, southern Blue Wall supporters and to its new-found northern, Red Wall voters? Now, with perverse ingenuity, it has found an issue that unites Blue and Red Wall electors, though not in a constructive way: Tory sleaze.