A northern mayor’s left-wing challenge to Labour

JAMIE DRISCOLL’s pitch mixes the nostalgic, the technocratic and the red-blooded. “Who remembers Curly Wurlys?” he asks. The fate of Britain’s public services, he says, recalls the shrinkflation that has reduced the chocolate bar of his childhood memory to just 21 grams. “Every government we get lets the rich get richer, while we get the Curly Wurly treatment.” His speech ranges from anecdotes of haggling with Treasury ministers to research on integrated transport systems. Then he adds: “What’s the bloody point of politicians who can’t think their own thoughts?”Those seeking a left-wing challenge to Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party have tended to hunt in Islington, the north London redoubt of Jeremy Corbyn, the exiled ex-leader. Better to head 275 miles (443km) north, to a community hall in Jarrow, a former shipbuilding town still synonymous with interwar unemployment.