The Pineapple is an attractive pub, a proper local boozer with character. Located on a quiet residential back street just north of Kentish Town in northwest London, it eschews the remorselessly drab templates of Britain’s ubiquitous chains.
The decor is vintage but not in a plastic, performative way: modest wood-panelling halfway up the walls, patterned wallpaper up the rest, a vintage tiled fireplace, leather banquettes, a red velvet curtain across the front door and a suntrap conservatory out the back.
Quality rock music plays through the speakers. Cool sounds are part of the pub’s appeal. A note on a mirror behind the bar, near the sound system’s controls, reads: “Do not bastard touch.”
On Tuesday afternoon the pub was a hive of activity due to an incident at a nearby home owned by the Pineapple’s most famous regular. Bemused locals supping pints in the early summer sunshine jockeyed at the bar with reporters and even a handful of unformed police. Keir Starmer, Britain’s prime minister, owns a house just around the corner. It was firebombed on Sunday night.
At 1.15am in the early hours of Monday, somebody set the front door and porch ablaze at the three-storey, four-bedroomed terraced house that Starmer has owned since 2004, and where he and his wife Victoria raised their two teenage children.
The prime minister and his family moved into a flat in Downing Street when he led Labour to victory in last July’s election. His Kentish Town home is reportedly currently occupied by his sister-in-law, who pays him a peppercorn rent. She was unhurt during the blaze, which scorched the doorway.
It was the third arson attack aimed at Starmer in less than a week. Last Thursday, May 8th, the anniversary of second World War Victory in Europe (VE Day), somebody set fire to a car parked on Starmer’s old street. He reportedly used to own the SUV, before selling it when he became prime minister.
There was also a separate fire in recent days at the front of another property in Islington, where he lived until 1997. The attacks, all seemingly deliberately targeted at property linked to Starmer, are being investigated by counter-terrorism police.
While the Pineapple was buzzing on Tuesday, Starmer’s tree-lined street was relatively quiet. Officers had closed the street following the blaze, hours before he gave a landmark speech on immigration in Downing Street. But the police tape was gone by Tuesday and the street reopened.
Fire damage was obvious at the front of the property, the door’s shattered glass replaced by plywood. A handful of workers stood around on the front path behind the high hedges, surveying the damage. Others, possibly non-uniformed police, stood nearby watching who went past.
At one end of the street, two uniformed officers spoke to an elderly local resident, a witness, who invited them up to her house for a proper chat. Thirty yards from Starmer’s house, across the street, scorch marks were evident on the tarmac from last week’s car fire.
London’s Metropolitan Police have arrested a 21-year-old man in connection with the attacks. Downing Street on Tuesday thanked officers on the Starmer’s behalf. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch condemned the firebombing as an “attack on democracy”.
London’s hot summer of domestic political angst continues.
