He adds: “There’s no doubt that with this government we could and should be doing much, much better.” But he knows even friends and those who support him as an MP will struggle to vote for him if they do not support his party’s leadership.

He recalls: “My mum died just before the election in 2015 in Bradwell hospital. One of her neighbours said, ‘Sorry Paul, not this time, nothing personal, I just don’t like your leader.'"

Corbyn is absent from all Farrelly’s campaign literature and the candidate struggles to contain his frustration at the leader and his entourage. “It’s not helpful when people like Diane [Abbott] get rolled out and don’t do their homework for interviews, but we have to fight with what we’ve got.”

The shift away from Labour in Newcastle is also about changing demographics, he says. There is a growing middle class who are more sympathetic to Conservative messages, and Farrelly is acutely aware that they are not being reached under Corbyn.

“It’s not just the dyed-in-the-wool people who might be considering a change – you’ve got to appeal to that middle ground, and it’s indisputable that under Jeremy Corbyn we are definitely not.”



Farrelly says his “big chance” is appealing to the formerly Labour areas that went to UKIP last time. “My challenge now, to have a fighting chance given the national polls, is to persuade these others who went to UKIP to come back to us. This is not a second referendum, no matter how much Theresa May wants to frame it like that.”

He pulls up outside 37 Freehold Street, a small terraced house near Newcastle town centre where he was born. “When I was growing up it was me and my two brothers in the front bedroom, my mum and dad in the back, and my uncle and his girfriend in the front room. They didn’t have indoor toilets, there were sheds out the back.”

While he tells this story, an old neighbour comes out to have a chat. Philip Prosser, 72, worked in the pottery industry for 18 years and then in a bakery. He voted UKIP last time but says to Farrelly that this year, “It can only be Labour, can’t it?”

This is exactly what Farrelly is hoping for, but BuzzFeed News didn’t meet any other voters planning to go from UKIP to Labour.



The other area Labour hopes to capitalise on is the student vote at Keele University, but even this is not guaranteed. It was, after all, here that Meredith and his friends worked so hard to make being Tory cool again. Politics lecturer Catney says: “Keele used to be the Kremlin on the hill in the '60s and '70s, as a left-wing firebrand place. But throughout my time here the Conservatives have been one of the largest groups on campus.”