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This weekend, while Boris ­Johnson prepares to become ­Britain’s Prime Minister, his young Labour opponent, Ali Milani, will be canvassing hard in Johnson’s seat in Uxbridge.

It’s not how every 25-year-old would celebrate their birthday weekend, but Ali isn’t every 25-year-old.

He’s a young man within 5,000 votes of unseating the future PM in an increasingly marginal constituency.

This wouldn’t just be the first time a sitting prime minister lost his seat in a general election.

For a Muslim ­immigrant to beat a man whose ­arguably racist comments about “letterboxes” and “piccaninnies” refer to around 30% of his own multi-ethnic constituents, it would also be poetic justice.

“I hear that phrase a lot,” Ali says.

“On so many levels. I’m the candidate that happens to be Muslim and ­immigrant.

"I’m also the local candidate, and the working-class candidate.

"I was born in Iran and came over at the age of five with my mum, so people also see it as poetic justice for Nazanin.”

(Image: IAN VOGLER/DAILY MIRROR)

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is the imprisoned British Iranian mother further endangered by Boris when he was Foreign Secretary.

“The buffoon character has consequences,” Ali says. “Nazanin is one of the consequences.”

Johnson was parachuted into Uxbridge as the Tory candidate in 2015, after leaving office as mayor.

The 2017 election saw his majority halved, partly due to shifting ­demographics, and partly, claims Ali, due to his lack of time spent in the area.

“It’s so rare to get Boris here in the constituency that you need David Attenborough to narrate it,” Ali says dryly.

“You could drop him off at the end of the road and he wouldn’t be able to find Uxbridge station.”

Then there’s the thorny local issue of Heathrow expansion.

“Boris was going to lie down in front of the bulldozers but he ran away to Afghanistan instead,” Ali says.

“I’m a Heathrow councillor. There are villages that will be devastated by Heathrow expansion in my ward. I’ll stand up for them.”

(Image: Ian Vogler/Daily Mirror)

The contrast between the two men could hardly be wider.

Ali grew up in a working-class household where his mum often had to choose between feeding the gas or electricity meter.

“Even in my wildest dreams I never thought I would stand to be an MP,” he says.

“Becoming an MP doesn’t happen for people like me who grow up in a council house raised by a single mum.

"MPs are people like Boris – Etonians.”

Instead, the Manchester United fan dreamed of becoming a goalkeeper, only losing out on a place at Fulham academy when genetic testing showed he wasn’t going to be tall enough.

He pulls himself up to his 5ft 7in height. “Science was right,” he smiles.”

Ali joined the Labour Party when he was at Brunel University, after hearing alumni and Shadow ­Chancellor John McDonnell speak.

“My generation has been hit with everything – tuition fees tripled, we’d lost EMA, the maintenance grant was gone.

"My mum was made homeless from her council house.

“I decided to get politically active and I went to a meeting. I thought I’d give him hell.

"But by the end of the meeting I said to him, ‘I want to canvas for you’. That broke the barrier in my mind against joining a political party.”

The former vice president of the National Union of Students laughs and says a few MPs have advised him to “get a real job” before becoming an MP.

(Image: AFP/Getty Images)

“I don’t need to work in Goldman Sachs for some life experience,” he says.

“Real life experience is when your mum can’t afford the electricity to cook.

"It’s spending my first day at school terrified because I couldn’t speak English.

"It’s considering picking up a knife to protect yourself, which luckily I never did.”

In any case, Ali says he’s lost several job offers since announcing his candidacy.

“They were with organisations who need to get on with the new prime minister, I understand that.”

He’s also had death threats since standing.

He shows me a message on Twitter about his candidacy: “I hope your family are well protected if you do this”.

Ali shrugs.

“I went to a school in North West London where you left by different entrances depending on what gang you were in.

"I had knives pulled on me regularly. I got beaten up. This has happened all my adult life. So I’m not that bothered.”

Boris, he says, “is going the Trump route. The veneer’s slipping. The ­difference between Trump and ­traditional Republicans isn’t policy, it’s that language has dropped the veneer.

"We need to give our own simple answer that the people with black and brown skin living next door have more in common with you than someone who made £100million tanking the economy.

“Words have consequences. I was at a primary school to give a talk. When they saw me, a kid said ‘ Brexit means Brexit’.

(Image: Getty Images)

"I’m pretty sure they weren’t talking about the Customs Union. That’s a kid picking up on the climate they live in.”

His own words have consequences too.

As a teenager he made anti-Semitic remarks on social media that he says he is “profoundly sorry” for.

“That’s the single biggest regret and embarrassment of my life,” he says.

“I’ve apologised every time I’m asked. In the environment I grew up in, we used all sorts of offensive language and I didn’t fully understand the social and historical weight.

"I’ve engaged with the Jewish community, been to Auschwitz and Birkenau. But I don’t want to do things to tweet about it, I want to do it out of sincerity.”

He knows how vital this is because “I’ve experienced racism myself”.

Locally, he says the main issues people are worried about are housing and schooling.

“45 kids in a class, parents crowdfunding for books. Foodbanks. Our hospital is in dire straits.

"I say we’ve got one general ­election to save the NHS and people think it’s an exaggeration but it’s not.

"How you can be a Prime Minister with any pride is beyond me.”

On Monday, barring a huge upset, Boris Johnson will be PM – leaving only Ali Milani between him and his dangerous ambitions for the country.

UNSEAT BORIS , Hillingdon Civic Centre, Sunday, July 21, 11am.