Long before Boris Johnson claimed the keys to 10 Downing Street, Ali Milani was pounding the pavements of outer London in an attempt to cut short his tenancy.
The 25-year-old Labour candidate for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, which Mr Johnson represents, is the antithesis of the Eton and Oxford-educated prime minister. Mr Milani was born in Iran. After coming to the UK aged four with his mother, he grew up on a nearby council estate. When he went to school he had to choose between the bus fare and lunch.
The two adversaries could go head to head sooner rather than later if Mr Johnson calls a snap election to break the Brexit deadlock or parliament passes a motion of no confidence in his government. Should Mr Milani go on to overturn Mr Johnson’s majority of 5,034 it would be the first time in more than a century that an incumbent prime minister has been unseated.
“Stranger things have happened in politics recently,” the Labour candidate said.
“This seat is the battleground for the future,” he added, and if Mr Johnson is the populist standard bearer for Britain’s rupture with the EU, Mr Milani will cast himself as the underdog, standing up to nativist forces.
“There are people whose path in this life is chiselled at birth — like the Johnsons. There are others who have to decide between feeding the electricity or gas meter,” he said.
The demographics of Uxbridge are potentially moving in the latter direction, although the Johnson stardust, as well as the buffoonery, has rubbed off on the area. Bemvindo Kuzulu, a resident of Angolan origin, said that he had voted for him in the past — after he intervened to help extend his mother’s stay — and would do so again.
The constituency was carved out of a larger area that has returned Conservative MPs in every election since 1970.
However, Mr Johnson’s majority was halved in the 2017 general election, which left his predecessor, Theresa May, with no overall majority, setting her eventual downfall in motion.
Meanwhile, the safe seat that Mr Johnson secured in 2015 after his second term as London mayor has undergone rapid change. The white-British share of the population in the area has fallen by 16 percentage points overall in the past decade to 51 per cent, according to official UK statistics.
This reflects one of the fastest increases in ethnic diversity anywhere in the country, a factor that has played to Labour’s hand elsewhere.
Of 40 constituencies with a population made up of at least 40 per cent of ethnic minorities at the 2017 election, 39 were won by Labour and just one by the Conservatives.
Data from March show there are now 44 of these diverse constituencies. Labour hold 41. Of the remaining three, one is Uxbridge, where the population is now 40.9 per cent black and minority ethnic.
“It’s not a question of if, but when Labour win here,” said Mr Milani, who relishes the outlines of the fight ahead: “A young Muslim immigrant and councillor for Heathrow from Iran who grew up in poverty, up against an Etonian playing out of Donald Trump’s handbook.”
Mr Milani says he never dreamt he would compete for a seat in parliament. But after serving as vice-president of the student union at Brunel University in Uxbridge he was persuaded to contest the candidacy in 2018 to attract young people to the hustings.
A sassy speaker, he won two-thirds of the votes of local Labour party members. That has posed new challenges. Two weeks ago he lost his job working for a charity as the result of his candidacy, because of its rules on political impartiality. Soon he could struggle to pay the rent.
“That’s exactly what’s wrong with the system. It’s why folks like me don’t get involved,” he said, adding: “Now that I am here, my job is to shake shit up.”
His efforts have attracted widespread support. One Labour member, he said, came all the way from Glasgow to help with canvassing. Activists from other London neighbourhoods are pitching in too.
So far, Mr Milani said, he has knocked on more than 4,000 doors, presenting himself as a local champion at a time of hardship and deteriorating services. He also sees himself on the front line of a national struggle to roll back the dog-whistle politics that Mr Johnson has deployed at times by, for example, alluding to the “watermelon smiles” of black people, or describing burka-wearing Muslim women as “letter boxes”.
In this respect Mr Milani’s own record is not unblemished. After a friend was killed in the Gaza Strip in 2011, he unleashed a string of anti-Israeli posts that strayed into the anti-Semitic.
“That is one of the most embarrassing things. Some of the language I used came from a point of ignorance,” he said, adding that he had apologised unreservedly since, visited the Holocaust memorial at Auschwitz and, as a victim of racism himself, had empathy for anyone facing it.
A straw poll of Uxbridge residents, suggested the fight will be finely balanced. It also underlined how the new prime minister is at once loved and loathed.
“He is a people person. That is what we need,” said Cheryll Hannant, a Leave-voting receptionist who said Mr Johnson had helped her after she had visited his constituency surgery.
On the other end of the spectrum was Josh Fatania, an optometrist who described the new prime minister as “a pantomime act”. “Uxbridge is very diverse and he is a divider,” he said.
Mr Johnson may hope he can divide and rule. When the elections come Mr Milani plans to give him a run for his money. “This can be a historic moment when we pull back from the brink,” he said.
Additional reporting by John Burn-Murdoch
