If Jeremy Corbyn wants to know what Labour voters think of his approach to Brexit he could do worse than visit the unpretentious residential road that bears his name in the heart of his constituency. Everyone, it seems, has a view about Corbyn and Brexit along Corbyn Street, London, N4.

This after all is metropolitan, cosmopolitan, strongly Labour supporting Islington. Corbyn has been the MP here since 1983 and was returned with a hefty majority of more than 21,000 at the general election in 2015.

When they talk about Corbyn the MP, as opposed to Corbyn the leader, in this part of north London, people laud his decency, values and hard work. The views given are uniformly positive.

But when it comes to his stance on Europe and his leadership on Brexit, Corbyn Street – like the parliamentary Labour party and the activist base – now splits down the middle. Neighbour disagrees with neighbour. Find a Corbyn loyalist on one doorstep, and on the next will be a newfound doubter.

Hora den Dulk, who runs a building firm, says he was impressed with Corbyn to begin with but has lost faith with him over Brexit. Photograph: Andy Hall/The Observer

Hora den Dulk, who runs his own building firm, admits that Corbyn is in “one hell of a bind” and realises that there is no neat answer. He appreciates that while Labour is a pro-European party it cannot just ignore the result of the referendum on 23 June last year to leave the EU. But he has lost faith in Corbyn because he tried to force his MPs to vote to trigger article 50 and go against the internationalist views that many in the parliamentary party, and their constituents, hold very dear.

“I was very impressed with him to begin with,” den Dulk says. “But I think he is wrong on this. I think he should have allowed MPs to vote with their consciences.”

Corbyn, he adds, has given mixed messages on Europe too often, allowing a lack of clarity to prevail that satisfies neither pro-EU Labour voters in the “metro” south or the pro-Brexit ones who voted to leave in large numbers in the midlands and north.

“They will all vote Ukip,” he predicts. “He will be crucified in the north. So it is not working however you look at it.”

Student Eli Bellezza says he is foursquare behind the Labour leader on Brexit. Photograph: Andy Hall/The Observer

Living directly opposite den Dulk, 20-year-old Eli Bellezza, a student at University College London, emerges from his home and immediately volunteers the counter view. He is a Labour member and foursquare behind Corbyn over Brexit, if not his leadership overall. “It is futile to try to stop the Brexit process,” he says. “He is absolutely right to say MPs must back article 50. I don’t necessarily think he is doing a good job as leader but on Brexit he has got it completely right.”

That line is echoed a few doors down. Huseyin Yusuf, an administrative assistant, has no doubt that the Brexit route he did not want the country to take must now be followed, like it or not. “We have to go ahead with Brexit now. I voted Remain but Corbyn is right. You just can’t try to stop it. The vote went for Leave.”

Joann Jackson says that if the Lib Dems had a stronger leader she would desert to them. “I think I have lost the plot with Labour,” she says. Photograph: Andy Hall/The Observer

Walk on and Joann Jackson, a retired principal of a further education college is, like den Dulk, fast going off Corbyn because she is not clear what he is about any more. She says he should not have gone against the party’s longheld view on Europe and should have maintained its opposition to Brexit.

If the Lib Dems had a stronger leader she would desert to them, she says: “I think I have finally lost the plot with Labour this time.”

Europe used to be the issue that divided Conservatives far more than Labour. But last year’s referendum vote, which saw two-thirds of Labour constituencies vote Leave but two-thirds of Labour voters overall vote Remain, has changed all that.

Theresa May and her ministers may be the ones who have to deliver an exit deal, with all its complexities and accompanying dangers to the economy and wider national interest, but it is Labour that is suffering politically as she presses on.

Amid the Brexit turmoil Corbyn, himself the most disloyal MP and serial rebel during his backbench years of obscurity, is left trying to forge some semblance of party unity over the defining issue of this parliament, but from the weakest of positions imaginable. Last week a fifth of Labour MPs defied his three-line whip to vote against the bill to trigger article 50. “What Corbyn says won’t stop us. He is irrelevant and is the last person able to tell us what to do,” said one former minister before the vote.

Many rebels were from Remain constituencies and said they voted out of deep-held beliefs, as genuinely held as those of their leader on other matters. Three members of Corbyn’s shadow cabinet have quit so far in the latest crisis to beset his leadership. The rebellion has spread to the whips office, the keepers of party discipline, and threatens to widen in days to come.

One senior party source said there was as yet no clear line on whether whips or other frontbench rebels would be punished if they defy him again at next week’s third reading vote on The European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill.

Not only is there a rebellion but no backlash against the rebels. “You can’t sack all the rebels as you would not have enough Corbyn people left to man the frontbench if you did.

“But on the other hand surely you can’t let whips defy the whip they are supposed to administer and police, and survive,” said the party official. “We are certainly in a pretty much impossible position now.”

Even at the Labour grassroots, from where Corbyn drew most of his support until recently, the split is widening and weakening his power base. Last weekend 5,000 Labour activists – many of whom had backed Corbyn as leader last September and the September before – signed an open letter to him within the space of 48 hours, complaining that he had betrayed the party’s values by three-line whipping article 50. After two days the organisers stopped collecting signatures, saying they had made their point and could not keep up.

The party’s Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer is now trying to find a way forward to steady the ship. He will try to rally all-party support behind amendments to the Brexit bill that would force the prime minister to commit to a “meaningful vote” in parliament to approve the final Brexit deal, before the EU council and European parliament sign it off.

This vote, he says, should take place with enough time to spare to allow the UK government and EU negotiators to try again for a better deal if MPs reject the original one. Starmer also wants an unconditional guarantee to be given before article 50 is triggered, stating that EU citizens in the UK will have the right to stay.

Sue Crockford and her daughter Sky are just as admiring of Corbyn as they were when Sue joined the party because of him last year. Photograph: Andy Hall/The Observer

But it is unlikely the amendments will pass and if they don’t it seems Corbyn will apply another three-line whip to get the bill through. More Labour MPs may join the ranks of the rebels.

With Corbyn facing two difficult by-elections this month in Copeland, Cumbria, and Stoke-on-Trent Central, where Ukip threatens an upset – the party’s leader Paul Nuttall is its candidate in Stoke – the official Labour line is that the party “will not obstruct Brexit”. Labour has to be seen to be backing Brexit now, for the sake of holding seats in its heartlands.

Back in Corbyn Street most Labour-supporting residents realise Corbyn has no easy way out, and sympathise. They say “he’s damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t” and qualify any criticism with recognition that “he’s between a rock and a hard place”. Further down the street, Sue Crockford and her daughter Sky are just as admiring of Corbyn as they were when Sue joined the party because of him last year. Corbyn has no option on Brexit, she says. “I hate the Brexit thing. But this at least gives him the leverage to try to influence Theresa May from now on. If he hadn’t done the three-line whip he would have had no credibility.”

Corbyn’s problem is that a few doors away another Labour voter will say pretty much precisely the opposite.