General election 2024: ghosts of Labour's past coming back to haunt Keir Starmer in north-east London

Walking down Chingford High Road, in the leafy east London-Essex borders, I struggle to find anyone who has a good thing to say about Starmer. One woman tells me she can’t vote for the Labour leader because he’s “too boring”, she wants someone “spicy” like Jeremy Corbyn or Nigel Farage. Another says she is worried about the “tax stuff”, while a gardener says he’s voting Reform as “Labour no longer represents the working man”.

While this is in no way a representative sample of the population, you need a poll for that, it does highlight how Labour’s brittle support could crumble once it gets into power. I’ve chosen to come to this corner of London to assess the chances of Faiza Shaheen.  

The economist and academic was Labour’s Parliamentary candidate for Chingford and Woodford Green in 2019. She was expected to fight and win the seat for the party this year, but was brusquely stripped of her position by the all-powerful National Executive Committee just days after Rishi Sunak called his snap poll.

This led a tearful Shaheen to decide to stand as an independent saying she represented a “progressive alternative”. I requested an interview several times with Shaheen but received no response. However on Chingford High Road, Shaheen is getting a lot of love.

Nurse Cathleen Morrin, 43, tells me the NHS “is a massive issue” for her so she won’t be voting for the Tories. “I like Faiza,” she says, “but I’m still not sure who to vote for.”

A woman, who is speaking on condition of anonymity as she’s already used her postal vote, says she’s voted for Shaheen. “She’s a local girl, she’s done well,” she explained. “I just think it’s time for change.”

When I ask 84-year-old Ray Warren who he’s voting for, he says: “Keir Starmer solved that for me.” Finally, I think, I’m about to hear from a Labour supporter, but no, he says he’s voting for Shaheen after she was “kicked out of the Labour Party”. “She’s a local girl from the area, while the Labour candidate has been parachuted in,” he says. 

His partner, Maureen Walker, says she would also vote for Shaheen if she lived in the constituency, adding: “I’m not sure about Keir Starmer, I didn’t like the way he dealt with Jeremy Corbyn.”

The Labour candidate is Shama Tatler, a councillor from Brent in north-west London. She also did not respond to a request for an interview, but said on her Twitter: “For real results, Chingford and Woodford Green needs a Labour MP, working with Labour government at every level - from local Labour Councils to Downing Street.” 

And in an apparent swipe at Shaheen, said: “A lone voice on the opposition backbenches, however loud, achieves nothing.” While Tatler certainly wouldn’t have been celebrating Shaheen entry to the race as an independent, incumbent Tory Iain Duncan Smith would have been punching the air.

The former Tory leader has been the MP for the area since 1992, but had his majority whittled down to just 1,604 in 2019. Given the huge swings to Labour in some areas, it appeared almost certain that Duncan Smith would lose his seat, however Shaheen has given local Tories hope.

One senior Conservative source tells me they’re expecting Shaheen to get between 4,000 and 8,000 votes, mostly off Labour, and that could be enough to save Duncan Smith. And the reviews he gets as an MP on Chingford High Road are good. 

“To be fair, when I’ve had contact with him, he’s always responded,” one man says. A woman adds: “He is a good MP, we’ve had to contact him a couple of times and he came back straight away.” However, I can’t find anyone who says they’re voting Tory. 

Instead people are considering Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, although when I dig deeper I find out these are former Labour voters. This is a phenomenon which has been picked up in focus groups, particularly across the Red Wall, and could eat away at Starmer’s support once he gets the keys to No10.

Louis Keene, a 52-year-old gardener, says he and his family used to vote for Labour “when they stood for the working man, but they don’t stand for that any more”. He tells me he’s voting Reform as it’s “for the man in the street”. He says he doesn’t mind legal migration, but wants to stop the small boat crossings.

A 33-year-old woman, who describes herself as Indian, asks to remain anonymous so she can speak openly. She says: “I’m thinking about voting for Labour, but I don’t like that guy [Starmer]. I can’t believe I’m saying this, I don’t know why but Nigel Farage is coming across as a nice guy.” She adds, almost exasperatedly: “Why is Nigel Farage making sense?”

She tells me Farage is appearing a lot on TikTok, which is where she gets most of her news. The Reform UK leader is the most popular UK politician on the video platform, with over 800,000 followers. She claims a lot of Gujaratis and Sikhs will vote for Farage.

When I ask her if she'll vote for Reform too, she sounds unsure. “If Labour still had Jeremy Corbyn I’d definitely vote for them,” she says as she walks off, “he’s spicy”. On that note, I head onto the Tube to find out how the former Labour leader is getting on with his campaign, like Faiza Shaheen, as an independent.

Corbyn was suspended by the party for comments he made after the publication of a report by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, which found “serious failings” on anti-semitism under his leadership. 

Corbyn said anti-semitism was "absolutely abhorrent" and "one anti-semite is one too many" in the party. But he added: "The scale of the problem was also dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and outside the party, as well as by much of the media." He was suspended for not retracting the latter point, and then chose to stand as an independent in Islington North in the 2024 general election when he found out Labour would not select him.

The 75-year-old has represented the constituency since 1983, a staggeringly long time, and when you get off the Tube in Finsbury Park it really feels like Corbyn country. There are posters supporting him in almost every window, and people mill around with stickers on. I can’t see a Labour placard in sight.

It’s usually very difficult for independent candidates to win in general elections, as many people just vote down party lines, however Corbyn certainly has the name recognition to overcome this. Islington councillor Praful Nargund is standing for Labour, however his campaign has been derailed as 11 local party officers have quit to support Corbyn.

A source tells me they think it’s neck and neck. As I visit the Corbyn campaign stand, dozens of activists return from door knocking. They look like classic Corbyn supporters clad in sandals and t-shirts marking the solstice. Despite the major local factors at play, it’s clear that Keir Starmer has opened up Labour’s left flank. When I visited Bristol recently, I met a number of former Labour members who had joined the Greens over issues like Gaza.

I speak to James Schneider, Corbyn’s campaign manager who has been with him since he ran for the Labour leadership in 2015. Clad in a white “Jeremy Corbyn” t-shirt, he tells me that people have come from all over the country to support his boss.

He says: “There are people who will be voting for Jeremy because he’s an incredibly good constituency MP. If you walk around here and talk to anyone, you will likely find they know Jeremy and he might have helped them in some way.

“Of course, there are big political reasons why people support Jeremy, particularly at this election. The issue of the NHS is extremely important, Jeremy has stood for ever for a fully public, universal NHS, free from privatisation. 

“The issue of the genocide in Gaza is a significant issue here as well. There’s a large number of private rented tenants in the constituency, rents are extremely high and child poverty is extremely high. Jeremy has always campaigned about rent controls which is at odds with where the other candidates are.” 

I ask Schneider how Corbyn feels about standing against the Labour Party, and he hits back: “Jeremy is not running against the Labour Party, the Labour Party is running against him. If you speak to people in the local Labour Party, people in the community and if you look at the polling, they wanted Jeremy to be the Labour candidate.”

If you walk around Finsbury Park station, near to where Corbyn lives, the support for him is overwhelming. I pop into The Coffee Bar, a Lebanese cafe, which has a number of photos of Corbyn in a love heart outside.

Inside, the walls are dotted with photos of the Labour leader from his childhood right up until now. There are more love-heart pictures of Corbyn as well. Unsurprisingly, owner Hussein Jaber, who has known Corbyn for 14 years, has strong feelings about him.

He tells me he “loves” him, saying: “When you love somebody, you have to do these things, you have to support them.” He says it’s like when you love a footballer, although “Jeremy is more than a footballer”. Hussein says they’re “best friends” and explains Corbyn’s favourite order is falafel. He adds that the biggest issue for him in the election is not Gaza but crime in the constituency. 

Both Islington North and Chingford and Woodford Green have big local factors in the support for their independent candidates. But both areas show that it’s not going to be easy for Starmer if he gets the keys to No10, his support could ebb away quickly.

Ralph Blackburn is NationalWorld’s politics editor based in Westminster, where he gets special access to Parliament, MPs and government briefings. If you liked this article you can follow Ralph on X (Twitter) here and sign up to his free weekly newsletter Politics Uncovered, which brings you the latest analysis and gossip from Westminster every Sunday.