Ali Milani first encountered Boris Johnson when he was 20. As a student in 2015, he went to a hustings for his next MP: when he called on Johnson and the other candidates to install a ballot box at Brunel University, local press described it as a “blasting”. His rivalry with the man who would become prime minister had begun.
“We have been beefing [since] way back; we have a long history,” Johnson’s local Labour opponent smiles when we meet outside St Margaret’s Church, the scene of that first confrontation.
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