Walk down the street with Jeremy Corbyn and you have to keep pausing while constituents stop to talk with him.
Such public recognition is rare for any MP, and explains why the former Labour leader continues to present a political problem for Sir Keir Starmer.
Perhaps worryingly for Sir Keir, his problem has no intention of going away.
In an interview with i, Mr Corbyn gave his strongest hint yet that he intends to stand against the party. He is barred from standing as a Labour MP after having the whip removed due to rows over his handling of antisemitism complaints.
He refused to rule out running for London Mayor, or against Labour as an independent candidate in his Islington North constituency in the next general election, likely to be next year.
“I’m here forever,” he said. “I love this area and I’m very happy to continue representing [it].
“I am not disappearing.”
This would present a significant challenge for Labour – currently between 16 and 20 points ahead in the polls.
Mr Corbyn spoke to i to raise concerns about Britain’s housing crisis, and to lobby the Labour leadership to ban Right to Buy.
His refusal to stay quiet on one of the most pressing issues in modern Britain has kept him in the spotlight since he was ejected from the Parliamentary Labour Party in 2020.
But further complicating matters is the escalating, intractable war in the Middle East. After the Hamas atrocities of October 7, in which 1,400 Israelis were killed, and more than 200 people, including women and children, were taken hostage, Mr Corbyn was criticised for his form of words.
He said “all attacks are wrong” but declined to specifically criticise Hamas. Since then, the Gaza health ministry says more than 8,000 people have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory bombing campaign, and the UN warns Gaza is running out of food, water and fuel.
i’s interview with Mr Corbyn took place before the Hamas terror attack, and his team said he would not be commenting on events that took place since the interview. A spokesman subsequently pointed that Mr Corbyn criticised Hamas in an article on 12 October, saying the “heinous” attacks were “utterly deplorable”.
But Mr Corbyn is well known for his support of Palestinians, which has defined his career and embroiled him and the Labour Party in the antisemitism complaints that led to his suspension.
When pressed on the subject that has come to publicly define his legacy – Labour’s handling of antisemitism – he told i that “antisemitism is evil”. He declined to say whether he would handle complaints about it in the Labour Party differently, were he to have his time again.
Now Sir Keir is facing difficulties with another wing of the party. His support for Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza has sparked fury and sadness among Muslim MPs, including on his front bench, and triggered the resignation of dozens of Labour councillors.
This unsteady mix of Labour politics is likely to seep into any electoral campaign that pitches Mr Corbyn against the party he used to lead.
If the former party leader does run against a Labour candidate (the election is likely next spring or autumn, but doesn’t have to be held until January 2025) it could split the left-wing vote in his constituency.
He would have a strong chance of winning the seat he has represented for 40 years, where he received 64 per cent of the vote in 2019. A split Labour vote would be unlikely to let the second-placed Lib Dems triumph, since they managed just 15 per cent last time round.
Mr Corbyn could also run for mayor of London next May – a more worrying prospect for Labour. That election will be decided on a first-past-the-post basis for the first time and a split Labour vote might be enough to let Tory candidate Susan Hall through the middle.
Despite all this, it is issues of equality that continue to most preoccupy Mr Corbyn. He spoke to i to talk about the housing crisis and poverty – issues which he would be likely to campaign on if he does stand next year.
He criticised Sir Keir for trying to make Labour appear “tough” on poverty by keeping the two-child benefit cap, and expressed his dismay that the party was retreating from his own policies, following election defeats in 2017 and 2019.
He told i he was “sad” that Labour are “running away” from what he sees as “obvious, intelligent and progressive policies” such as ending Right to Buy, which allows council and some social housing tenants to buy their homes at a discount on market value.
The policy, introduced by Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government just before Mr Corbyn was elected for the first time, has resulted in an average annual net loss of 24,000 social homes since 1991 and, according to research, exacerbated Britain’s worsening housing crisis.
In July, the former shadow Housing Secretary, Lisa Nandy, said Labour supported Right to Buy because it “extends wealth ownership”.
Mr Corbyn supports ending the Right to Buy policy and establishing a £1bn “buyback” fund to bring the homes lost through it back into state ownership.
“I think it’s very sad that the Labour Party is retreating away from ending Right to Buy,” Mr Corbyn said. “They all know the arguments that I would use against [it] are completely valid and completely logical… even Tories know that.”
In 2019, after Labour lost 59 seats in the general election, Mr Corbyn stood down as leader of the opposition. It was the second-worst loss for any opposition party in a century.
His supporters prefer to argue that in 2017, he presided over Labour’s largest increase in its share of the vote since 1945.
“I was preparing to go into government in 2019,” Mr Corbyn said. “I was discussing what the first thing we would say and do [would be]. Day one. Number one: homelessness is over. From now on, everyone will be housed in some form. We [were going to] provide the money to local authorities to house rough sleepers and go from here.
“I thought it was very important to make that statement.”
The 2019 Labour manifesto outlined plans to spend £600m on providing 5,000 additional beds through a Modern Hostels Fund, with a further £200m to overhaul existing hotels. A further £100m was pledged for emergency winter shelter and support ,and Labour said it would find 8,000 homes for rough sleepers.
Whether a Corbyn-led Labour government would have been able to fund and then implement these policies remains unclear. The Covid pandemic, soaring inflation and the cost-of-living crisis hit not long after the election.
In 2019, Mr Corbyn proposed a national system of rent control and is regretful that a measure to bring down private rents is not currently a Labour proposal.
“You have [programmes like] Homes Under the Hammer telling you what a good idea it is to buy homes to rent out, and so we have the most massive housing insecurity,” he said. “Other countries manage rent control – in Europe – and cities in the US… We’ve got to get past this psychology that you make money out of the housing market.”
While walking around his Islington constituency, Mr Corbyn talked passionately about the Andover Estate where playgrounds and a community centre were built-in as considered parts of the layout, and unused garages are currently being turned into urgently needed social homes.
He stressed the need to “build communities, not just houses”.
“I am proud to be part of a [local] campaigning community on housing, jobs and employment, as well as an international campaign for peace and justice,” said Mr Corbyn, who has been spending time in Mexico recently with the country’s left-wing president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
“We’re a very rich country. Let’s be imaginative,” Mr Corbyn said. “Let’s think about universal basic income. Let’s think about sharing things out. Let’s think about the asset we’ve got, the genius of all these young people. That genius is being wasted.”
For all Mr Corbyn’s passion about fighting inequality, he remains barred from standing as a Labour MP after losing the whip. This was due to his response to the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) report into the handling of antisemitism complaints in the party, published in 2020.
The report found that the party had broken the law under the Equalities Act and cited “serious failings in the Labour Party leadership in addressing antisemitism and an inadequate process for handling antisemitism complaints”.
Mr Corbyn initially said allegations had been “dramatically overstated for political reasons”. He then issued another statement saying: “I regret the pain this issue has caused the Jewish community and would wish to do nothing that would exacerbate or prolong it.
“To be clear, concerns about antisemitism are neither ‘exaggerated’ nor ‘overstated’.”
Nearly three years on – but before the Hamas terror attack and Israel’s subsequent bombing of Gaza – i asked if Mr Corbyn would handle complaints about it in the Labour Party differently, were he to have his time again?
He declined to say. “My focus is on defeating racism in every form within our society, decency towards refugees, decency towards homeless people, and recognizing the strength of diversity of our community – the Jewish community, the Muslim community, the different communities around here – Congolese, Somali, Turkish, Eritrean and Ethiopian and many others,” he said.