For the first time since the departure of David Cameron from No 10 we have a prime minister who is part of a scene.
The Camerons straddled two scenes: the North Kensington blow-dried honeys and the Oxfordshire/Gloucestershire Cotswolds nexus of power. Then Boris Johnson came along, with, famously, no friends at all. The Sunaks had the rootless air of all the international mega-wealthy. If either were part of a scene or a set we didn’t know about it, or, more likely, couldn’t relate to it.
It was the Blairs who started the modern political scene, of course, in Islington, way back in 1996. But the Blairs were two rich barristers (and Tony was privately educated), with a constituency miles away in Sedgefield. They were the epitome of the champagne socialist.
The Starmers are a completely new thing in politics. They lived in, worked in and represented Kentish Town, where I have lived since 2008. Starmer is no champagne socialist. His father was a toolmaker, don’t forget! Whether he’s another sort of socialist (cloudy IPA socialist?) and is going to take away everyone else’s champagne remains to be seen.
I moved into the area because my boyfriend (now husband) owned a house there and I took a shine to it. I moved in, sent him to a therapist and threw out all his hideous furniture. It has always been Labour central round here: Ed Miliband (back in the cabinet) is close by in posher, leafier Dartmouth Park; Keir Starmer’s biographer Tom Baldwin has been spotted in the French restaurant Authentique; Alastair Campbell lives a stone’s throw away in Gospel Oak; and Neil Kinnock’s grandchildren went to the same nursery as my kids. That was a shock at pick-up time.
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The Starmer clan really, really live here, let me tell you. I’m so used to seeing them pottering about — Victoria walking to work, Keir driving around (observing the 20mph speed limit) — that it will be genuinely weird without them. At last Sunday’s service at St Benet’s and All Saints, close to their home, the Rev Guy Willis led prayers for Keir. It’s something of a heart-in-mouth moment. They aren’t just any family, they’re one of us, and they have been plucked from the fox-infested north London streets and sent to run the country. It feels a bit Hunger Games.
There are, as it happens, strange overlaps between the Kentish Town and Cameron scenes. The first being that Tufnell Park, like North Kensington (see also Hackney and Brixton), is a mix of posh people slumming it, middle-class invaders and the actual working class. We are shielded from mega-wealthy hedgies and international money because the houses aren’t big enough and there’s no off-street parking.
Unlike North Kensington, though, we have a high percentage of kooky lefties who grow their own veg, house asylum seekers and protest about literally anything. Kentish Town’s high street is a strange mix of shops: there is the hardcore vegetarian organic shop Earth and the smart Owl Bookshop but also a busy Poundstretcher, several homeware stores that mostly sell bleach, and Rio’s the naturist spa.
The Chipping Norton set fed themselves from Daylesford Organic, Waitrose and Lidgates, the butcher on Holland Park. Kentish Town residents mostly do their shopping on Fortess Road: at Fam, a large, independent grocer; at the butcher Meat NW5 and the fishmonger Jonathan Norris.
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Tennis and padel were favourites with the North Kensington/Oxfordshire lot, but around here people prefer to get their exercise with a good old-fashioned walk on Hampstead Heath. Probably with the dog they bought during lockdown and probably wearing old walking boots, socks, leggings that are a bit pilled and a khaki bomber jacket. The closest we get to an exercise class is Naomi’s Bootcamp on Tufnell Park itself — a muddy hour-long session attended by post-partum mums and occasionally someone’s husband wearing a knee brace. Men with functioning knees play five-a-side at the Market Road football pitches. Parliament Hill Lido has a special cult going on, and you can spot cold-water swimmers staggering around Highgate Road post-dip, wearing Dryrobes and looking shell-shocked.
On the corner of Fortess Road is a yoga studio. But doing yoga isn’t very Kentish Town. We’re the sort of stout and sensible piss-takers who can’t say “om” with a straight face. Just generally, walking is a big thing around here. Many families get around on foot, by Tube, or by push bike or Lime bike. Many don’t bother owning one car, let alone getting another for the nanny (which no one has anyway). This is just as well, because if you have a nice one it will get nicked. After four thefts in ten years we own an old and very ugly car, but at least I know it will be there in the morning.
When not in walking boots, everyone wears trainers — Nike high-tops are popular, as are those large, white New Balance Jerry Seinfeld things. I haven’t seen a woman in heels here since 2020. Twentysomethings wear Adidas Sambas, but less so since Rishi Sunak wore his pair. What I’m saying is that you won’t catch Lady Starmer in anything like the £570 pair of JW Anderson slippers that Akshata Murty wore while moving into No 10. If there’s anything less Kentish Town in the world, it’s those slippers. Other slippers, yes. Those slippers — no.
Birkenstocks, on the other hand, are standard issue for everyone; ladies often accessorise theirs with neon toenails. Boiler suits and dungarees from the organic, recycled clothing brand Lucy & Yak are popular too. No one carries a smart handbag, because that’s just asking to be mugged by a 12-year-old on a bike. Safer to have a Uniqlo zippy sling bag or a cotton tote from a bookshop.
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If you have a big event like a wedding, or your husband is now prime minister, locals (such as Victoria Starmer) will turn to Me+Em. This is the ultimate Chipping Norton/Kentish Town crossover, because Me+Em trousers, jackets and dresses dominate the shires. But grooming is generally far lower down on the list of priorities for Kentish Towners than it is for Chipping Norton types. No one round here has a regular blow-dry or “tweakments” or is on any diet beyond eating a lot of beans and kale. No one would dream of taking Ozempic, having Botox or even doing a juice cleanse.
As I type, the area is about to empty for the summer. Since lockdown, with everyone working more flexibly, a good percentage of families clear out for weeks on end. There’s always one sunny week somewhere (a shared Italian villa, or someone’s parent has a place in France). Besides that it’s a series of brutal staycations in odd bits of the country you haven’t heard of — probably in a caravan “with cousins” — to build character. We leave glamorous places like Rock, Wells-next-the-Sea and Salcombe to the Tories.
Like Starmer, I am a clichéd Kentish Town dad
By Ben Dowell
“Breathe it in,” I joked to friends as they arrived for lunch at our Kentish Town flat on Sunday. “It’s the air of the new elite.” Some of my guests hailed from the cultural wastelands of south London (only kidding), some were local, but all knew what I meant: that local lad Sir Keir Starmer, whose house is a two-minute walk away (spitting distance if you are a Reform voter), was our country’s new boss.
The 2010s may have had Notting Hill and Chipping Norton, stomping ground of the Cameroonies. The 1990s may have all been about the Islington set, Granita restaurant and lawyerly Tony and Cherie get-togethers. But now London NW5, where I have lived for more than 20 years, is the place to be. Starmer is our MP, our prime minister and patron saint of centrist north London dads.
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As it happens, one of my lunch guests, the literary critic Chris Tayler, is the lead guitarist in a covers band called Centrist Dad. Robert Peston is their enthusiastic (cough) vocalist, Ed Balls is on drums (he’s not bad) and the Radio 4 arts presenter John Wilson is the bass player (he’s very good). They play local street parties and the like. Chris showed us footage of a recent gig where Ed Miliband and Starmer were in the audience. Apparently when they belted out the first few bars of Anarchy in the UK Starmer told Miliband it was probably better if he didn’t sing along, showing that he knew his music and some of the traps that politicians can get into. Anarchy-gate might have made Miliband’s bacon sandwich solecism look tame.
It’s strange reading profiles of Starmer because he seems so familiar. He drinks in the same boozer as me (the Pineapple, which has an excellent pint and noodles deal); like me he plays five-a-side football on one of the local Astroturf pitches (I know someone who plays in his game and he is one of the more competitive ones); and his kids go to north London state schools (ditto). He likes cooking and his signature dish is tandoori salmon. Snap. Reading all the articles that have been coming out in recent months feels less like finding out more about the man who leads us, as looking in the mirror. Are we all like this?
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Most people will feel that there is something unique about their neighbourhood and the same is definitely true of K-Town as we call it. I grew up in north London in the 1980s but in Hampstead. It was a posh area but my dad was the left-wing vicar of the parish church and our huge house in Church Row was more like a squat where we had homeless people over for breakfast and CND campaigners staying virtually rent-free. Even then Kentish Town was seen as a bit edgy, a slightly run-down area where you wouldn’t necessarily choose to live and whose prime virtue was affordability. Now it is going up in the world, but we wouldn’t want to be considered elite.
Some of its rough edges are still there but that’s how we centrist dads like it. There are pound shops and an Iceland alongside chi-chi bakers (go to Kossoffs for the finest croissants in the world) and some brilliant restaurants, many of which (including the peerless kebab emporium E Mono) have laminated reviews by the local lad Giles Coren pinned to their walls. You see Starmer and his wife, Victoria, around all the time, either in the unkempt but brilliantly stocked local hardware shop B&S DIY or the Sainsbury’s Local.
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It’s near enough to Hampstead Heath for us to swim all year round in the ponds (yes, a lot of us are cold water swimmers) and it’s a rare day when you don’t see a celebrity taking the slightly mud-coloured waters: Benedict Cumberbatch, Dermot O’Leary, Ed Miliband and Simon Amstell are regulars. To the delight of my teenage daughters, Harry Styles is often in there, keeping himself to himself and avoiding the eyes of dads like me who know our credibility with our children would go instantly stratospheric if we exchanged a few words with him. Friends of mine have played petanque on Hampstead Heath with Miliband which, as I type the words, I realise does make us look like just the kind of tossers everyone says north Londoners are.
Yes, I am clearly a ghastly cliché but I will say this: it’s a lovely place to live and a real community. It’s far enough from Hampstead not to be too poncey but near enough for the heath to be our communal garden. Here you just assume everyone votes Labour and when the election results come in you feel amazed that Starmer didn’t have an east European-style 98 per cent majority.
But it can be rough; often the police helicopters are overheard training searchlights on various ne’er-do-wells and keeping us awake. Crime is not unheard of. In fact, if the PM hangs around (he is still our MP), as one of my friends noted, it may be better for us all. It’s generally safe, but you never know. A few Special Branch officers on the streets and on the heath looking out for the PM and his family will do nicely, thank you very much. We can sip our lattes in even greater comfort. God, just listen to me. I’ll shut up now.
