Is the left in Britain still alive and well?

As mainstream politics moves to the centre, what has happened to the beating heart of the left? Zoe Williams takes a road trip in search of 21st-century socialists

Rosie Rogers, 28, and I are sitting in a tipi outside her office in Highbury, London. (She works for Greenpeace as a political adviser - of course they have a tipi.) I'm on a quest to find the British left, because it's become apparent no one quite knows where it has gone, or what it looks like. Far from a beating heart, these days it is made up of many small organisations. "You know the Brownies," Rogers asks. "You have all those patches? We have so many patches. You have your Reclaim the Power badge, your Focus E15 badge, your UK Feminista badge, your UK Uncut badge. It feels like 'the left' isn't how people identify any more. We don't say, 'I'm a lefty, I'm a socialist, I'm a Marxist.' Sometimes I'm a bit Women's Institute, sometimes I'll sign a 38 Degrees petition, sometimes I'll go on a climate march."

Quick glossary: Reclaim the Power is a grassroots environmental movement; Focus E15 is the housing protest that started when Newham council in London tried to shunt some single mothers out of a hostel to private rentals 100 miles away (it started tiny, but now has 10,000 supporters); UK Feminista does what it says; UK Uncut, which has a network of 80,000 people, opposes corporate tax avoidance and austerity measures, in whatever way they think will work.

In these movements we all sleep together, we all hang out" It's participatory, consensus-based, dynamic, fun

I thought: why is anyone going to listen to a brown man? I didn't feel I could connect with the people in politics

I sat next to a young campaigner on poverty who thought people over 40 were pointless. We'd had our chance, and blown it

The difference between right and left politics, this division is no longer useful