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.
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