“I just wanted to take young Russell Brand and flush his head down the khazi,” Arnott told me. “It was so frustrating because we were doing precisely what he was advocating, though we were rather more middle-aged and unattractive. We really wanted to provide an alternative, but because unlike him we’re grown-ups, we knew the only way to do it is to put yourself up at local elections – do the hard yards first, Russell.”

I warmed to this notion of a disparate band of locals demanding greater transparency and accountability in local government, drawing support from all parts of the political spectrum and taking on the might of the Conservative political machine.

“People from different backgrounds could come together because they shared a similar radicalism as far as reforming governance was concerned,” said Arnott. “It’s made some quite rightwing people think very hard about the social economy.

This sounded like fluid, grassroots modern politics, not the class-based trench warfare of old. I mooted a national Citizens’ party to Arnott, the EDA writ large. “If you are prepared to launch the Citizens’ party,” he said, “the East Devon Alliance would be interested in opening talks with you.”