Henley & Thame.

Henley and Thame is a prosperous, rural-leaning seat in the South East, older and better-qualified than the national average, with a median age of 46 and close to half its adults degree-educated. No single town dominates. The largest share of residents, roughly 28 per cent, lives in rural and dispersed settlements, with Henley-on-Thames and Thame the principal towns and a string of smaller places -- Chinnor, Benson, Sonning Common -- filling out a network rather than a hub. Local services across all fifteen of the seat's wards fall to a single body, South Oxfordshire District Council.

The politics of the place have a settled, non-Conservative cast. Across the most recent round of ward contests the Liberal Democrats took fourteen, the Greens six and the Henley Residents Group three, a pattern that suggests Conservative organisation has thinned at the local level. The parliamentary picture points the same way. At the 2024 election, the first fought on these boundaries, the Liberal Democrats won 45 per cent against 33 per cent for the Conservatives, a margin of roughly twelve points. Freddie van Mierlo, the Liberal Democrat returned that year, has registered no whipped dissent in recent months and speaks most often on the economy, health and local government.

The direction of travel, on the figures available, runs steadily away from the seat's former Conservative identity, though a single contest is a thin basis for calling it secure. Recent local coverage has had a community-minded, administrative character, weighted towards planning and town affairs rather than sharp political conflict, and the seat keeps a low national profile. With the towns dispersed, the council uncontested until 2027 and the Liberal Democrat advantage broad but young, the constituency looks more settled than contested -- a recent realignment still bedding in.