There are a few mentions of the awful WhatsApp messages that sealed the fate of the former Labour MP Andrew Gwynne, but people talk most animatedly about grimly familiar subjects: grooming gangs, small boats, sky-high private rents and the impossible cost of living. “My mum’s got stage four terminal cancer and she can’t afford to put her heating on,” one woman tells me, with a bracing anger. And every 10 minutes, I hear some or other version of that dependable modern mantra: “I really don’t like Keir Starmer.” Beyond one man’s claim that “he hasn’t done what he said he’d do”, no one can specify exactly why, but that seems to fire people’s loathing all the more: on this evidence, his most damaging shortcoming remains that glaring failure to define who he is.