ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOHN WATSON
On a dank Sunderland evening, Pop Recs—a small gig venue and community bar— is heaving. Nearly 100 people have turned out to meet Jamie Driscoll, mayor for the North of Tyne region, running on 2nd May for an expanded mayoralty spanning the northeast, which he helped broker into being. The crowd is a mixed bunch: the socialist next to me points to a Tory councillor across the room.
Driscoll is a leftist fixer, who works with local Tories and swaps texts with Michael Gove. But the Labour machine blocked his candidacy. (The party initially briefed it was because he’d done a cultural event with Ken Loach, who was expelled from Labour during its antisemitism inquiry, but told me it didn’t comment on individual decisions, offering only generalisations about “standards”.) He walks out to Elton John’s “I’m Still Standing”— which he is, as an independent.