Next atop the soapbox stage was the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU) President Ian Hudson. He had travelled from Blackpool the day prior to start canvassing for his old pal and he galvanised the “Corbyn family”. Taking a pop at the new candidate Labour has selected to compete against the expelled former leader, Hudson said Praful Nargund had “made his wealth in private health” (Nargund used to work as a director at his family’s IVF treatment company). When I spoke to Corbyn, he told me he was “disgusted” at the way he had been treated by the party.

Hudson went on: “There are loads of people coming here from outside [Islington North] because they recognise that if we want a voice in Westminster, we as a class have to organise and put them there.” No doubt it chimed for some genuinely working-class people in the audience, but it was hard to avoid the feeling that young upwardly mobile creatives with their totes and craft coffees were LARPing radicalism. “We as a class,” Hudson had shouted. That might have worked in Blackpool, less so in Islington.

Then up stepped the man himself. After giving thanks to his disciples, Corbyn said: “This beautiful park didn’t come from nowhere. No park came from nowhere. It came because of progressive politics.” He spoke of his local successes, including ensuring Whittington Park’s survival and retaining the Number 4 bus service. There was also some mention of his global efforts: standing up for human rights and championing environmentalism. A man recording him had a Socialist Worker “Freedom for Palestine” sticker on his phone. Children ran around playing with mini Palestine flags. From the Number 4 bus to Palestine, it was a disorientating mix of the hyper-local and the global.

While the teacher might have been overstating the excitement Islington’s schoolchildren have for their MP, there is no doubt that Corbyn looms large in these parts.  Seen as part-sage, part-heroic leader, since 2010 he has won his seat at every election with more than half the vote share, reaching a high of 73% in 2017 with a 33,000 majority. What will also give Corbyn confidence that he can win this seat even without the party infrastructure he has previously enjoyed is the fact that this is a politically engaged constituency. In 2019, the voter turnout here was 71%; in the UK as a whole it was 67%.

But it will still worry Corbyn and his team that he is an independent. The MC who was giving the activists advice on what to say at the doors insisted they should open with the question: “Do you know Jeremy Corbyn is standing as an independent at this election?” Many people don’t know, he conceded.

Corbyn’s ignominious fall from the top of the Labour Party as it made its turn back to rehashed Blairism is the elephant in the room, and the Labour Party in its present form is despised here. Hudson, a lifelong Labour voter, told me he would be voting Green. Martin, from nearby Dalston which falls under Diane Abbott’s constituency of Hackney North and Stoke Newington, said he would be doing the same. While Starmer will devote little concern to what happens in Islington North on 4 July, he may have turned away many more Left-wing voters than the polls suggest.

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Max Mitchell is UnHerd’s Assistant Editor, Newsroom.

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