It’s not just the UK left behind by ‘booming’ London. It’s Londoners too | Aditya Chakrabortty

In the latest of our pre-election series, Aditya Chakrabortty goes back to Edmonton, another suburb failed by the national economy

'You work at the Guardian, but you're from Edmonton?" That but, and the genuine wonderment packed into it, made me laugh. This was Kate Osamor speaking! Come next Thursday, she will almost certainly be elected as the Labour MP for my old home of Edmonton, in north London. She'll move into the Palace of Westminster and take up one of the 650 most elite positions in Britain. But before that process of dessication, she can still be impressed by more humble achievements.

I've heard that tone before: you're from here? The first temptation is to laugh it off - it's a newspaper, mate, not a space mission. But soon the questions behind the question start to weigh you down. From outside the Guardian's offices, a bus runs all the way to Edmonton Green shopping centre. The journey takes less than an hour. The idea of anyone actually making it seems to me as plausible as a fairy handing out coins for fallen teeth.

Related: Recession rich: Britain's wealthiest double net worth since crisis

Drug-dealers colonise the doorstep of her constituency office, and prostitution goes on behind it

The local Labour-led council has done some heroic work, most notably on building social housing

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