Harry Mount

Left out

New Labour Islington is no more – it is now an area for Tory-voting bankers

New Labour Islington is no more – it is now an area for Tory-voting bankers

When I grew up in Islington in the 1980s and 90s, there was a reliable election ritual: the bigger the Georgian villa, the more likely the resident barrister was to put up a Labour poster in his sash window. If they weren’t barristers, they were senior Labour politicians. Some were both.

The poster in the window in the rambling terraced house in Canonbury belonged to Charlie Falconer, later lord chancellor. Nearby was Malvern Terrace, home to Brenda Dean, later Lady Dean, former general secretary of the print union Sogat. Next door was Margaret Hodge. A few doors down, at 1 Richmond Crescent, was the spiritual king of fashionable Islington, Tony Blair.

For decades, if a newspaper wanted to sum up bien-pensant thought, a combination of the words ‘sun-dried tomato’, ‘polenta’ and ‘Islington’ did the trick. But no longer.

Labour won Islington South at the election, as it has at every election since 1935. But its status as the home of metropolitan, rucola-munching thought has evaporated. House prices have zoomed out of the range of the left-wing artists and professionals who flocked there in the 70s and 80s. Early Victorian villas, once owned by poets, social workers and film directors, have been bought for £2 million by Conservative-voting bankers.

The centre of the Labour world has moved west, to the cheaper terraces of Kentish Town, Primrose Hill and Dartmouth Park, home to Ed Miliband. Dartmouth Park has all the credentials Islington used to have. There’s a fine selection of stucco-trimmed villas, still in the price range of politicians, writers and actresses; Neil and Glenda Kinnock, Glenda Jackson and Julian Barnes all live there.

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