Article

Change

Community

Politics

8 July 2024

6 min read

Camden: what’s up in Keir’s backyard?

The new Prime Minister’s constituency has valuable lessons for the country.

Simon Walsh

Simon Walsh is a communications consultant, journalist and non-stipendiary priest in the Diocese of London.

Kier Starmer walks along a residential development's path with two other people.

Starmer and local councillors in Camden.

‘What good ever came out of Nazareth?’ was asked of Jesus. The same might now be said of Camden, which lies at the heart of the Holborn & St Pancras constituency. A safe Labour seat since the 1980s, its present incumbent is Sir Keir Starmer who has been handed the keys to Downing Street in the General Election.

His wallet apparently has on it ‘Take me home to Kentish Town’. Two buses link Kentish Town, where he lives, with Whitehall – a route of about four miles. He will go into government with a very full in-tray, and many of them are issues he knows first-hand from his own constituency. I know them too, having lived there for 20 years.

Sometimes I cover services for a clergy colleague in the nearby parish of St Mary’s, Somers Town. The church is on Eversholt Street which runs along the eastern side of Euston station, incidentally the capital’s first mainline railway terminus. Last year, as I arrived for a mass one rainy Saturday morning, a random group of people sheltered in the doorway. They were, I discovered, addicts waiting for a drugs drop. Towards the end of mass, one of the group – a young woman – came into the back of church and found a pew in which to start preparing her fix. Once I had disrobed, I asked if she wouldn’t mind doing it somewhere else.

Another time, in the same church, a young woman from Spain was asking for money. She had answered a job advert on social media to come and work on a chicken farm. Having arrived and paid her accommodation for a week, she found there was no chicken farm, and trying to find other work was almost impossible because of paperwork. What could we do to help? The church itself is in dire need of financial support too.

St Mary’s Flats... were among the first examples of public housing in the country to have electricity and Jellicoe became something of a social housing celebrity.

Somers Town was transformed 100 years ago when its energetic parish priest, Fr Basil Jellicoe, created the first housing association. Dismayed by the squalor of Victorian tenements, he set about raising funds for The St Pancras House Improvement Society. Jellicoe was only in his mid-20s but had a solid Anglo-Catholic background founded on mission and a heart for the poor. The cramped and filthy conditions with extreme poverty were ‘an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual disgrace’ – for him, the opposite to the sacraments.

By the time Jellicoe moved from the parish in 1934, the slums had been cleared and a number of the new blocks built, the first being St Mary’s Flats, with others given saints’ names. They were among the first examples of public housing in the country to have electricity and Jellicoe became something of a social housing celebrity. Tragically, having worn himself out he died at the age of 36. His legacy is one of praxis – active Christianity meeting social problems where they are – and his model became the blueprint for many other housing associations since.

No surprise, therefore, that families struggle to afford to live in the area and migrate further out. As a result, schools have started to close.

The area remains a swirl of social problems in addition to the drugs. Mental health issues are rife. There are plans to redevelop St Pancras Hospital which houses mental health services. The area suffers from traffic and noise pollution, and lacks communal spaces. Camden Council recently saw fit take one corner of a public green in Somers Town on which to build a tower block of multi-million pound flats, handy for nearby St Pancras Station. Crime rates are high with muggings and mobile phone thefts a daily reality. Last year, as mourners left a funeral one Saturday afternoon at St Aloysius Church just a few streets down from St Mary’s, a drive-by-shooting injured six people. Starmer called the incident ‘appalling’ and spoke of ‘extra patrols and community support’ after a conversation with police.

The area has become highly expensive. Local businesses are being priced out by increased rents. Very little social housing has been built this century. The average house price in NW1, which encompasses the Nash terraces of Regents Park, the council blocks and social housing of Somers Town, is £1.3 million. A two-bed flat is in excess of half a million quid. No surprise, therefore, that families struggle to afford to live in the area and migrate further out. As a result, schools have started to close – four in as many years recently. In his acceptance speech in Camden Council’s offices near St Pancras station, close to the world-renowned Crick Institute and Facebook’s UK headquarters, Starmer namechecked the mythical ‘girl from Somers Town’ and his hope for her future.

Charles Dickens went to school around here and knew these streets well. His 1848 novel Dombey & Son detailed the destruction and chaos caused in the area by the building of the railway line through it. 175 years later, it has been HS2, the great White Elephant which has dug up streets, seen whole blocks of accommodation and hotels demolished, diverted roads, and axed much-loved institutions like the Bree Louise pub. There has been no benefit to locals so far (quite the opposite, in fact) and it is a stain on both Labour and Conservative administrations. Sir Keir says he is furious at the ‘big hole’ left by the down-tools project. There is fear now that the redundant land will be subject to a ‘gold rush’ as developers circle to pick up some prime real estate.

Interviewed in June by the Camden New Journal, Starmer said: ‘The government has earmarked money for Euston. I want to see that money and obviously, if we come into power, we’ll see through all this money – and not stripped away from other projects which is the usual trick.’ He also said: ‘The other thing is we need housing. Camden desperately needs housing as many places do. So we will use it – if we are privileged to come into power – as part of our plan for 1.5 million homes.’

His manifesto has five pledges:

Kickstart economic growth

The cost-of-living crisis is biting hard here and the inequalities are stark. People need real money.

Make Britain a clean energy superpower

It’s going to need more than a few on-street charging points for electric vehicles. And the carbon footprint of that HS2 project?

Take back our streets

He wants to halve crime rates but London has around 106 crimes per 1,000 people and his own constituency feels less safe than it used to.

Break down barriers to opportunity

Camden already ranks highly in the deprivation index where barriers are concerned: schools, homes, jobs…

Build an NHS fit for the future

Again, the hospitals and GP services are cracking – high demand combined with under-investment is deadly.

A prophet is not welcome in his own country, it was said. Although the new Prime Minister was elected with a majority in his home seat, it was down to 18,884 votes from the 2019 endorsement of 36,641 votes – a drop of almost 50%. In this election, an Independent candidate called Andrew Feinstein polled 7,312 votes with his pledge to improve life for local residents. Starmer’s constituents will be counting on him to fix the nation along with the problems on their own streets. Otherwise, safe seat or not, he may no longer be welcome in Camden either.

Article

Belief

Creed

Leading

Politics

17 October 2025

5 min read

Let's keep hope weird, Zack

Amid growing grief for the future, the Greens' leader is calling for 'ordinary hope'

Lauren Westwood

Lauren Westwood works in faith engagement communications for The Salvation Army.

Zack Polanski returns to Manchester.

The Green Party

The recent Green Party’s political broadcast has been praised for its emotional clarity, moral urgency and a call to action that has seen party membership surge.

Looking down the lens, recalling his years growing up in the north of England, party leader Zack Polanski sighs,

“There was something in the air… a kind of ordinary hope.”

As he walks through a typical British city, filmed in Manchester, lined with terraced houses and bright-white lights beaming over takeaway shops and industrial bins, he diagnoses the collective hopelessness of a ‘people too tired to fight, to sleep.’

In just under four minutes, Polanski disarms objections to his cause with a sensitive, poetic script. He opens by referring to the common experience of a satisfying bowl of cornflakes – before plainly illustrating the socioeconomic injustice facing the everyman. He then makes the case for fair wealth taxation, and closes with the cheery challenge:

‘Let’s make hope normal again.’

It’s a compelling appeal that resonates with those weary of cynicism. But what does it actually mean?

I don’t call this to question because I don’t actually want good things for our country. I do, desperately.

To be clear, I call this to question because I desperately want good things for our coutnry. Warm homes, clean air, safe streets and an NHS that works for all – I believe these things should be normal. But I’m not sure I want to normalise hope.

Because real hope is weird.

Hope is not to be confused with optimism, or good prospects, or a positivity about the future reserved for the privileged. It’s not increased with social mobility or sitting comfortably in a five-year plan. Hope is not even the belief that things will get better. Real hope is much truer than that. It is a deep knowing that all shall be well, even when that seems foolish – a glance through the ancient literature of the Bible points to hope as singing in a prison cell, relief in the wilderness, resurrection in the face of crucifixion.

As NT Wright, the theologian, puts it: ‘Hope is what you get when you suddenly realise a different worldview is possible, a worldview in which the rich, the powerful, and the unscrupulous do not after all have the last word.’ This kind of hope doesn’t waiver with the housing market, interest rates, or inheritance tax. It’s not the result of good policy or strong polling. It’s the stubborn belief that love wins – and has, in fact, already won – even, or especially, when it looks like all is lost.

This is where Polanski’s got it right. There is a present and growing grief for the future. Across the UK, millions feel disengaged, disrespected and undervalued. Distrust of politicians, division in communities and loss of faith in the systems supposed to be for our benefit seem to be at an all-time high.

Polanski’s call to hope comes at a time when a redeemed order seems impossible or, at best, several generations away. But, instead of accepting the kind of ‘ordinary hope’ Polanski experienced back in his youth, the answer to our deepest longing lies in realising we need something extraordinary to happen and knowing that we’re allowed to believe that it will.

We don’t need to be desensitised to hope – we need the opposite. We need to be reawakened to everyday glimmers of redemption – the neighbour who pops by for sugar and stays for a safe conversation, the health worker who acknowledges a former patient with a grateful smile, the family whose fear is soothed by the kind gesture of an elderly white neighbour – and recognise our share and our part in bringing it on, believing there is yet more and better to uncover.

Polanski is incredibly perceptive in his address to the concerns of the hard-working plumber and the fledgling hair salon owner, nervous that their hard earnings and ambition will be cut short: ‘I wondered, “Why did they think I was talking about them?” And now, I get it. It’s because it’s too hard to picture.’

Hope, too, is hard to see. A better world is hard to imagine. Though Polanski is advocating for a public reform and reimagination of what it means to be taxed, our souls are capable of the sudden realisation that another way is possible. We can experience life-altering revelation that leads to fresh vision, both for what is seen and for the yet unseen.

For the Christian, hope is not some far-out abstract concept, but a gift made real through belief in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ – a Middle Eastern man who walked the earth two thousand years ago, held no title, had no place to lay his head, and called himself the Way, the Truth and the Life. See? Real hope gets weird.

Instead of being content to accept an ordinary hope – made small, palatable and unremarkable – we can embrace hope as it was designed. A liberating reality that brings steady assurance to every thought, every reaction, every decision and, yes, every vote. This confidence comes not because we are sure of our own rightness, but precisely because we are not. We submit to its mystery because a hope that we can control, mediate and measure will never lead to the transformation we most long for.

Do I long to see an increased hope for the future across the UK? Of course. But do I believe we should ever grow accustomed to hope? I don’t think so. We need contagious hope – wild and holy and strange, anything but normal.

Tax the super-rich so that children can eat, parents can sleep, and ordinary people can be lifted out of extraordinary poverty – but let’s keep hope weird.

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