The hotly-anticipated ‘Tory Glastonbury’ is taking place on the farm of Mark Davies, a multi-millionaire gambling magnate, former banker and bookies’ lobbyist, Guido can reveal. Tory MP George Freeman is fronting the invitation-only Big Tent Fest which is being promoted as a festival of ideas to take the fight to Corbyn and win back young voters from Labour. The venue is less a muddy field and more of a country pile…

The festival will be taking place in Berkshire on land owned by former Betfair managing director Mark Davies. Davies left Betfair in 2010 amid a messy £4 million legal dispute, before setting up Camberton PR, a lobbying company for bookmakers including Ladbrokes. Davies was a director at Probability, a firm providing online casino technology to the likes of Paddy Power and William Hill. Before entering the gambling world he was a banker at JP Morgan. Just the person to win over Corbyn voters…

What about the farm itself? Davies bought ‘West End Farm’ in rural Berkshire for £2.4 million in 2006 – it will now be worth significantly more, something like £5 million.

The festival kicks off this evening with cocktails, a hog roast and some opening talks. The three big tents focus on the economy, society and politics respectively. It has a distinctly centrist feel – Labour MP Liam Byrne and Alexander Holroyd, one of Macron’s En Marche! deputies – are guest speakers. To be fair to Freeman the line-up includes some names worth listening to: Liam Halligan, Iain Martin, Roger Scruton, Juliet Samuel, Phillip Blond, Sam Bowman and Gerard Lyons. Alan Mak and Andrew Cooper are also attending. Corbynistas are going to have a field day with this though…