Without question, my life can be neatly divided into three distinctive political epochs. I was born in 1980, just a year before Margaret Thatcher ascended to Downing Street, quoting the prayer of St Francis of Assisi: “Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope.” The Conservatives’ reign in the ’80s was anything but harmonious. Beyond the boundaries of the North London square where my family resided, there seemed to be constant unrest – strikes, protests, I.R.A. attacks, and the ever-persistent melodies of George Michael on the airwaves. My father—a city lawyer—ventured to Germany to purchase a Mercedes, which he cruised back home in sheer euphoria. Until Thatcher resigned when I was ten, her intensely teased hair and compellingly deep voice loomed large in my young psyche—a more fascinating, more perilous representation of the Queen.
I was on the brink of 17 when the Tories finally lost their grip on power to Tony Blair and “New Labour”, a modern, market-oriented reimagining of the party. Before his move to Ten Downing Street, Blair was an inhabitant of Islington—the steadily gentrifying region I hailed from. Boris Johnson, a
Priyam Gera