Just hours after Andy and Jamie Murray crashed out of the Wimbledon grand slam, I arrive at the Islington Tennis Centre for another showdown featuring a one-time champion in an uphill struggle against the rivals he once crushed. Five years after he was in contention for Britain’s premiership, Jeremy Corbyn is standing for the first time in his political career against the official Labour Party candidate.
While Islington has long been derided as the home of the ‘North London metropolitan elite’, Corbyn’s constituency of Islington North is a different beast. The tower blocks of Finsbury Park seem a world away from the wine bars of Upper Street. The leafy Victorian streets of Highbury less so, but when Corbyn was first elected in 1983, they were home to teachers, nurses and itinerant squatters. Now their residents are more likely to be media executives and even bankers.
