Frugal, self-effacing and an obsessive campaigner, veteran leftwinger Jeremy Corbyn is a reluctant candidate for the Labour leadership – but someone had to put their hat in the ring to promote debate, he says

A couple of hours ago, Jeremy Corbyn secured his 35th nomination at the last possible moment – just enough for him to make the shortlist for the Labour leadership race. If you were expecting him to be all swagger and selfies, whoops and high-fives, think again. This is Jeremy Corbyn, man of the people, five-time winner of parliamentary beard of the year (when beards weren’t trendy, mind), veteran leftist, the obsessive campaigner who has signed up to virtually any issue worth signing up to over the past 40 years.

“Congratulations!” I say, enthusiastically.

“Thank you,” Corbyn says, warily. “I’m slightly surprised that we made it through, but there we are.”

Corbyn is such an unlikely leader, so devoted to the collective that he can’t even bear to refer to himself in the first person. It’s always we – and there’s nothing royal about it (he is a devout republican). “We” turns out to be a subset of lefties who wanted an alternative to the Stepford candidates standing for the leadership. If he were elected leader of Labour, you half expect the first thing he would do is get rid of the top job and replace it with a co-op.

Labour leftwinger Jeremy Corbyn wins place on ballot for leadership Read more

So why has he stood? “We had a discussion among a group of us on the left about how we might influence future developments of the party. All of us felt the leadership contest was not a good idea – there should have been a policy debate first. There wasn’t, so we decided somebody should put their hat in the ring in order to promote that debate. And, unfortunately, it’s my hat in the ring.”

Why did it have to be his hat? “Well, Diane [Abbott] and John [McDonnell] have done it before, so it was my turn.” So he took some persuading? “Yeah. I have never held any appointed office, so in that sense it’s unusual, but if I can promote some causes and debate by doing this, then good. That’s why I’m doing it.” He offers a tiny smile. Blink and you miss it. “At my age I’m not likely to be a long-term contender, am I?”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jeremy Corbyn in 1984, campaigning for troops to be withdrawn from Northern Ireland. Photograph: Peter Brooker/Rex Shutterstock

If this were a job interview, Corbyn would have already been shown the door. And not just because of his age – 66. Corbyn is the anti-Blair, in every way. Whereas you cannot be unaware of Blair when he is in the room (he is all charisma), you might well not notice Corbyn arriving or leaving. And despite the smears by association in yesterday’s newspapers, he could not be more different to the preening George Galloway. He is a silver mouse of a man with extraordinarily committed politics. His history of campaigning is on display on the shelves in his Commons office – in file after ancient file of carefully documented paperwork. Here’s the Guildford Four, there’s the Birmingham Six, Afghanistan and Iraq, a delegation about Chechnya to Moscow, Mordechai Vanunu, who was imprisoned in Israel for giving away its nuclear secrets, Palestine, the World Social Forum 2004 in Mumbai, the legality of war conference of the European left, Stop the War (of which he is chair), CND (vice-chair), the Antarctica Act 1996, and on it goes. He is an international socialist, so there are modest gifts from the Black American Workers Association celebrating his 25 years in parliament and multicoloured tequilas from Venezuela, “which I don’t actually drink”.

The thing about Corbyn is that he is nearly always proved right – after the event. So when he insisted on embracing Gerry Adams and Sinn Féin decades ago, many people thought he was mad. Ditto when he campaigned for the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six, whose innocence was later proved. And we’ve not even started on apartheid …

The wall behind his desk is dedicated to more personal stuff – a poster celebrating the centenary of Arsenal, a drawing of his grandson (he has three grown sons, one of whom works with John McDonnell), photographs of his beautiful wife and a historic Islington Trade Council banner (personal is all relative with Corbyn).

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Corbyn joins an anti-General Pinochet protest in 1998. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock

You would expect Corbyn to have charisma by the bucketload and a leonine ego, but he doesn’t. He is kind and gentle, yet almost invisible – as if he has sacrificed his personality to the cause. He reminds me of the actor Jim Broadbent, who once told me he wanted to strip himself of individuality, be a clean sheet, so he could build himself up afresh for every part. He still has a touch of Citizen Smith about him (without the laughs) and even his biggest fans admit he can’t open his mouth without expressing the need for peace, justice and solidarity.

Corbyn has been MP for Islington North for 32 years and last month secured his seat with a whopping 21,000 majority. It is one of the most socio-economically and ethnically diverse constituencies in the country, and he feels many of their views are not being heard in today’s Labour party. “Politically active people felt more and more disenfranchised, particularly during the ultra-New Labour years.”

Within seconds, he segues into one of his current favourite topics. “I’ve just had an interesting discussion on the TTIP.” The what? “Ah, sorry – the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. This is a negotiation between the US and European Union to develop a way in which investment would be protected, and a way in which governments must not make life difficult for investors. The fear is that it’s a race to the bottom, with the lowest common denominator on both sides of the Atlantic becoming the norm. Hence a government that tries to enforce special conditions on a company, such as wage levels and working conditions, could then be threatened with legal action by a newly created trade court.” This is a good example of why many people believe it is important to have a candidate like Corbyn because it is unlikely we would hear much about the TTIP from the three other candidates (Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall) in the leadership race.

Not surprisingly, Corbyn doesn’t buy into the idea that Ed Miliband’s Labour had moved too far to the left. “It certainly wasn’t an ultra-left manifesto,” he says. “What was it proposing? A limited amount of public ownership of the national railways, which is actually very popular, quite good stuff on the minimum wage and so on, but on the economy, it wasn’t fundamentally redistributive, which is what we need to be putting forward. We live in a very unequal society.”

The biggest problem, he says, was that Labour allowed the Tories to set the agenda on the economy and never offered an alternative narrative. “We’re very bad at asserting certain things. After the 2010 election and Liam Byrne’s note in the Treasury, it became in the public mind a fact that Labour spent too much and this became repeated all the time, unchallenged. And by the time we actually got round to an election five years later, there was an assumption that we admitted we’d spent too much. Actually, what did we spend too much on? The banking system collapsed because of a combination of a sub-prime mortgage crisis and deregulation. There was a lot of money spent buying out bank shares and buying out banks, a lot of money spent on quantitative easing to keep the money supply going, and now Osborne is selling off RBS shares at a loss and calling it a triumph for him and his government. So I think we have to be much more assertive as to what actually happened.”

But he is unimpressed with the attacks on Miliband by New Labour’s old guard. “I obviously didn’t agree with everything he did or said in the campaign, but he stood up well and worked very hard and should be thanked for that. I’m not joining in personal attacks … I don’t do personal attacks.” It’s true, he doesn’t. Try as you might to get him to badmouth an individual politician, he won’t. Everything is about the policy.

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Would there be a role for Ed Miliband in a Corbyn-led shadow cabinet? “I hope there will be a very good role for Ed. He’s a very intelligent person, was a great environment secretary, and I hope he does those kind of issues in the future.”

Corbyn grew up in a politicised family in Shropshire. “Mum and Dad met campaigning on the Spanish civil war. Both were active peace campaigners. They died in 1986 and ’87. Dad would be 100 now.” His brother Piers, a weather forecaster who denies that climate change is a product of human activity, was even further to the left of Corbyn when they were growing up and joined the Communist party. He couldn’t be more opposed to Piers on global warming, but he refers to him affectionately. “We talk quite a lot. Don’t always agree. It’s a family, you know.”

As a boy, he liked working on local farms and making things (nowadays, he has an allotment, on which he grows all sorts). He went to a good grammar school, was a poor student and left at 18 with two A-levels, grade E. “John Major said I was better qualified than him. He got O-levels.” Was he lazy at school? “I liked reading about things, doing my own course of study in that sense.” I ask what politicised him. “Peace issues. Vietnam. Environmental issues. Then I did VSO in Jamaica when I left school. An amazing two years.” Typically, there are no anecdotes, nothing personal – just a list of issues and events. On his return from Jamaica, he worked for trade unions, eventually becoming national organiser of Nupe.

One of the few cited stories about Corbyn is that the former Labour MP-turned-Ukip MEP Robert Kilroy-Silk tried to hit him but Corbyn ran away. “I had been on a programme on television the day before talking about why Militants shouldn’t be expelled from the Labour party. He thought they should, and he was extremely abusive, threw me against a wall in the voting lobby. His quote was: ‘I’m an amateur boxer, I can sort anybody out,’ and somebody said to me what do you do in your spare time, and I said: ‘I’m an amateur runner,’ which is true. I do enjoy running.” So he did run away? “No. I walked off. You can hardly run through the voting lobby. He thought it was a great triumph for his macho prowess.”

There is something of the ascetic about Corbyn. At the time of the expenses scandal, it was reported that he had the lowest claim in the Commons – £8.95 for a printer cartridge. Actually, he’d like to come clean on this one, he says – he’d screwed up his expenses. “You had to pay within a certain period for things, and somewhere along the line we claimed for one print cartridge, but the rest of the stuff was slightly slower going in so that went into the next claim period, which was a much more realistic claim. A more typical Corbyn claim might run to “a few hundred quid each quarter”. He rents his office from the the Ethical Property Company. “Fine people. Hossana to the Ethical Property people.” He raises his mug of coffee by way of a toast.

You have described yourself as parsimonious, haven’t you? “Probably, yes.” How? “Well, I don’t spend a lot of money, I lead a very normal life, I ride a bicycle and I don’t have a car.”

Corbyn seems so distant from modern Labour. Has he ever been close to leaving? “I’ve often been extremely frustrated by the Labour party, particularly over Iraq and, earlier, on Vietnam. Then you think what the Labour party has achieved, and that it is the electoral home to millions of people, so I’m still in it. Always have been. I remember discussing this with Tony Benn many times, and he said: ‘You know, comrade, we’re just in it, aren’t we?’ Tony was a very close friend.”

Could he imagine having a relationship with somebody who wasn’t on the left? “No. At the end of the day, it’s the question of your values. They get in the way.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest At a mass march against Trident in January 2015. Photograph: Alamy

In 1999, he and his first wife (a Chilean very much on the left) divorced. Is it true that the marriage collapsed because of a row over their children’s schooling (he wanted the local comp; she insisted on a grammar school and won)? There is a tense silence. He looks me in the face. “I hated that period. I hated the publicity for it. I hated the pressure put on my kids as a result of it, and it was a very unpleasant and very intrusive. We divorced. We have three kids; we get on very well; we talk to each other; and I don’t like dragging personal things into my political life. And I think it’s very sad when that happens. I don’t criticise anybody else for what happens with their children, and I don’t expect people to interfere with my children’s lives.”

But it was an issue of principle? “I feel very strongly about comprehensive education, yes.” He pauses. “It’s gone, it’s past and people should leave personal stuff out of it if they can.”

It says so much about you, I say. But he shuts the subject down. “Well, I’ve got three boys and love them dearly and we get along great.”

We talk about the key plank of his leadership bid. Corbyn talks in generalities rather than costed specifics. Yes, he would redistribute, and, yes, the wealthier would pay more tax, he says. “Austerity is used as a cover to reconfigure society and increase inequality and injustice. Labour needs to offer a coherent economic alternative.”

What does he say to those who call him an anachronism? Nothing, he says. “It’s not personal. It’s about a political idea. It’s about ensuring there is a debate, about ensuring that the best traditions of Labour are still around.”

What is his greatest weaknesses as a potential leader? He thinks. “I tend to see the best in people all the time. Is that a weakness? I don’t know.”

Like the rest of the country, Corbyn doesn’t think he has a chance of winning. But these are funny times in politics. Just think of the SNP in Scotland, I say. “Well, Scotland is part of the UK,” he replies, enthusiastically.

How would he feel if he actually won? “Interested,” he says calmly. “And hopeful that we could bring about some changes in Britain.” Would it scare him? He closes his eyes, as if imagining himself as Labour leader for the first time. “Scare me?” He smiles. “It would be a challenge.”