Hometown of Britain’s ‘New Labor’ hints at political shift

In the trendy neighborhood where it all began, the centrist revolution led by Tony Blair — the swaggering days of “Cool Britannia,” the unprecedented 13 years of Labor Party rule — could be sputtering to an exhausted, inglorious end.

The north London borough of Islington is the spiritual home of “New Labor,” the modern, sleek, election-winning machine that Blair, a onetime resident, honed out of the unreconstructed old Marxist party. It was in one of Islington’s many chic restaurants, wedged between boutique shops and a few pubs, that Blair and his successor, current Prime Minister Gordon Brown, reputedly sealed their famous “me first, you next” deal on sharing power more than 15 years ago.

But as voters cast their ballots Thursday in the most exciting national election in years, Labor’s lock on government seemed destined to come to an end.

Even here in Islington, Labor’s candidate for Parliament was in danger of losing the race to her challenger from the Liberal Democrats, the breakout “third party” that has rewritten the rules of British politics.

Nagin Padel hopes so. A retired businessman, Padel has been impressed with the way that the center-left “Lib Dems” have run the local council in coalition with Labor, and now is their chance to take it to the national level.

“It’s good to be able to vote for a decent party which can govern Islington,” Padel, 72, said. “The Liberal Democrats have done very good things in Islington … especially in looking after the communities and in social welfare.”

The Conservatives, Britain’s other major party, aren’t much of a force here. But nationally they lead in the polls, with many bookies rating leader David Cameron the favorite to become the next prime minister.

“There are still a huge number of undecided voters, who may not vote or won’t decide until they get to the voting booth,” said Duncan Webster, 30, a Conservative candidate for the local council. “A lot of Islington areas that used to be Labor are now wavering.”

In many ways, Islington offers a neat microcosm of 21st century Britain.

It’s ethnically diverse, with residents descended from immigrants or who are immigrants themselves, many from South Asia. Rich professionals inhabit spruced-up Victorian homes that rocketed in value during the boom years, but a sizable proportion of the population lives in public housing. Older longtime residents share the streets, sometimes begrudgingly, with flocks of rowdy young people who nurse cocktails in the bars or come celebrate after wins by the famous Arsenal soccer club, whose stadium is close by.

Voters here presaged the country’s increasingly liberal social attitudes by electing Britain’s first openly gay member of Parliament, a Laborite who went on serve in Blair’s Cabinet and held office for 22 years.

But things shifted politically in the last general election, in 2005. Handicapped by popular anger over Blair’s decision to join the U.S. in invading Iraq, the Labor candidate, Emily Thornberry, beat the Liberal Democrat nominee, Bridget Fox, by fewer than 500 votes.

The two women are the main contenders again in Thursday’s poll. Labor has the history, but Fox’s party, led by the new star of the election, Nick Clegg, has the momentum.

To hang on to her seat, Thornberry needed to get out the vote of more die-hard Labor supporters like Jonathan Kewley, 28.

“She’s done a lot for women in Parliament. We are still a Labor constituency,” said Kewley, a legal worker in London’s financial district.

He scoffed at the Conservative leadership, many of whom come from “posh,” even aristocratic, backgrounds. “I don’t think these guys know anything about real people and real life,” Kewley said.

But for all the excitement over such an unpredictable election, which could produce a rare “hung parliament” in which no party has an overall majority, there’s also disgust. Politics seems to many to be a dirty business, especially after a shocking scandal over abuse of parliamentary expense accounts last year.

“A plague on all your houses, I say,” retired teacher Margaret Hall, 79, said.

Hall cast her ballot — she wouldn’t say for whom — on a sunny morning in a polling station on fashionable Upper Street. Across the road was the site where Blair and Brown allegedly agreed, in 1994, that Blair had first dibs on heading the New Labor revival.

The restaurant where the two men had dinner, Granita, is gone now, replaced by a Tex-Mex eatery with perhaps a more fitting name.

It’s called Desperados.

henry.chu@latimes.com

Stobart is a news assistant in The Times’ London Bureau.