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“It’s dangerous here and we need some change,” said Jonathan Brown, emerging from a launderette in Tottenham. “There’s a dark cloud round here that needs to be lifted.”

Welcome to Haringey. A borough where the local political elite is embroiled in a vicious Left v Left battle but where many local people have more pressing — and tragic — concerns.

A street away, in Chalgrove Road, flowers and tributes are stacked high against a wall. This was where 17-year-old Tanesha Melbourne was killed by shots from a passing car just a few weeks ago. Mr Brown said local politicians were not engaged enough in what has gone wrong in a community that feels broken and fragile and is deeply grieving the death of one of its children.

A mother-of-four pushing a pram said she doesn’t like the area and felt safer when she lived in Barnet.

Crime and the safety of their families is on their minds. Strikingly, few people offered unprompted opinions about the issue that has most gripped local politicians over recent months of in-fighting in Haringey Labour Party, a regeneration scheme of the local Northumberland Park estates.

This was seized on by Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign group, Momentum, which ex-councillors claim organised a mass deselection of long-serving members and prompted the resignation of former council leader Claire Kober.

The scheme, known as the Haringey Development Vehicle, would have seen the council go into partnership with private company Lendlease. It is currently on hold. Natalie Ducille, a teaching assistant who has lived in the area for 23 years, said: “Crime is the bigger issue.” But on housing she said: “People are concerned that if they regenerate it, that they won’t come back. You can do [the flats] up… but leave people in them.”

Labour has run this diverse north London borough, which is home to one of London’s biggest black communities, since 1971. It has dilapidated estates, genteel Edwardian terraces and grand Victorian mansions — streets ripe for gentrification. Some residents agreed with the anti-Kober argument that regeneration would lead to “social cleansing” of the poor.

Ivy Grier, 88, who claims she was the first West Indian woman in Tottenham, said if the area was regenerated she doesn’t want “any hooligans” to move in. “We would want quiet and decent people,” she said.

It’s a solid Labour area yet I could see no election posters in windows or banners — in contrast to the ones adorning the leafy streets of the borough’s richer Crouch End and Highgate postcodes.

Nor were there banners supporting the Stop HDV campaign against the building of 6,400 new homes with a private developer. Ironically, the regeneration plan proved more of a talking point on the doorsteps of Crouch End.

Some former Labour supporters are outraged by the loss of Ms Kober, who quit in February claiming she had been bullied by Corbyn supporters and Momentum. “I thought that was a dreadful way to treat her,” a retired grandmother said wearily at her immaculate red-brick Victorian home, a world away from Northumberland Park. “I voted Labour in 2014. I would vote Lib Dem this time.”

On Priory Gardens, where houses average £1.2 million, Mark Evans, a 44-year-old lawyer, tells me he switched from Labour to the Lib Dems some time ago. He said: “I know others are clearly switching because I’ve seen the posters in windows.” Roland Clement, 43, who lives near Highgate station answered the door to Lib Dem campaigners with his 11-year-old daughter Lauren. He said he was interested in protecting the much-loved local library which his daughter uses.

Kate Wells, 46, a teaching assistant who lives in Crouch End, said she was undecided who to vote for but had not been too impressed with the last Labour administration. She added: “You see stuff happening around here, and you think, who made that decision? And it’s just a fait accompli.” For all the political upheaval they have created, Haringey’s incoming Left-wing rulers turned out to be comically shy at putting themselves up for scrutiny by the media.

Phone calls, emails and texts requesting a chance to go door-knocking with them were not returned. I was told they “couldn’t see what they would get out of” being observed by the mainstream media while talking to voters. One disgruntled former councillor said: “Most of what I see of the campaign is on Twitter. In fact, it often seems less like an election campaign and more like a pre-emptive victory march.”

Eventually an email turned up from council candidate Sarah Williams, standing in the West Green ward. She said: “The proposed Haringey Development Vehicle was unpopular locally. It did cause some pain and some headlines but many residents tell us they’re pleased the manifesto has made clear that, if elected, a new Labour council will take a different approach.”

The council’s deputy leader Joseph Ejiofor, who sits on Momentum’s executive at a national level, is also keen to push their plans to tackle crime. They would hire more council staff to deal with gangs and improve youth services.

I also ran into some of Labour’s new candidates when they appeared at a hustings at Muswell Hill Synagogue. They turned out to be enthusiastic and passionate about representing their communities, albeit inexperienced. Bounds Green candidate James Chiriyankandath, a 58-year-old political academic running for the first time, said people were concerned with “local issues — traffic, housing, rubbish collections and all those kind of things.”

Several members of the audience made clear that Mr Corbyn’s anti-Semitism crisis had lost Labour votes. A 25-year-old Jewish woman called Sarah spoke emotionally from the floor: “I have been to local Labour Party meetings — I left this year — in which my brother and I were told that the Jews had massive influence over the media. It is impossible for me to vote for Labour for all those things.”

Emma Whyshall, who stood in Barnet in the 2017 general election and is standing in Muswell Hill ward, replied: “I cannot apologise enough.”

For all the controversies, it is hard to imagine Labour losing any of its 49 seats out of 57 in the council chamber. But the Haringey Revolution is in full swing. There is still no successor to Ms Kober, with at least four rivals vying for the job. There’s also the sense that this borough will serve as a litmus test for the success of Mr Corbyn’s brand of Labour.

Ms Whysall said: “There will be a lot of media attention. There will be a spotlight but we will always do what’s right for residents.” For this troubled borough, Thursday’s elections will be the start of a new political battle.