He might be the most left-wing leader of the Labour party since Keir Hardie but Jeremy Corbyn and his staff will soon be rubbing shoulders with some of the richest people in Britain when his party’s headquarters move to the west London suburb and Tory stronghold of Kensington later this year.
Labour has been told to vacate its current offices in Westminster by Christmas and having failed to find an affordable base near Parliament, the party has been forced to decamp three miles away to High Street Kensington.
It means Mr Corbyn’s staff will be working in the richest borough in London, where the average house price is a cool £1.4m.
His aides will be able to witness at first hand the super-rich lifestyles of residents who Mr Corbyn and shadow chancellor John McDonnell want to target with higher rates of tax to deliver their socialist dream of ending inequality.
Their new neighbours will include the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and some of the richest UK citizens, including Bernie Ecclestone, the F1 boss who owns four homes worth more than £2bn and Conservative peer John Sainsbury, whose net value is estimated at £1.3bn, while the Daily Mail, one of the fiercest opponents of Mr Corbyn’s left-wing agenda, will be less than a stone’s throw away.
The Labour party will also be able to count The Independent as its new neighbour.
A Labour insider told the Financial Times that the new office will be a cheap “shell” building and sources insist the move will be temporary while the party searches for a more convenient headquarters closer to Parliament.
The party is currently based in Brewer’s Green – a five minute walk from Parliament – but the owners of the building, Anquila Corporation, is redeveloping it next year and has told occupants to move out by Christmas, according to the Financial Times.
Office space is hard to come by in and around Westminster, with an increasing number of offices being converted into residential buildings and some landlords have been put-off from renting office space out to political parties after rioters targeted the Conservative party headquarters during the student protests in 2011.
Mr Corbyn’s inner team will not be affected by the move and will remain in Parliament, while staff working for Sadiq Khan will move to offices nearby.
A Labour party spokesperson said: “Discussions are on-going about the future location of the Labour party’s offices.”
