Coffee, jam and confidence as Jeremy Corbyn comes to the seaside

Barry Island’s sports and social club is filled to capacity when Jeremy Corbyn’s red bus rolls up the hill, just before midday on Saturday. A dozen hardcore supporters wait outside in the cold for the prospect of a chat or a selfie. Unable to get in, one woman asks a harried local party member, incongruously dressed in a suit and a Santa hat, if he’ll pass on a gift “for Jeremy – please”. Whooping breaks out inside as Corbyn enters the room to what is now his public soundtrack, several giddy choruses of “Ooohh Jeremy Corbyn”, as one man yells: “You’re a legend!”

Richard, a retired local architect, stands in the road and sticks two fingers up at the Labour leader as the coach passes him. “It feels good to do that to him,” he says. “I’m giving him the finger because I don’t like the chap. To me, he’s a throwback to Michael Foot and Tony Benn. He’s a dinosaur.” Richard, who declines to give his surname, says he usually votes Conservative but was unsure what to do now as his local MP, Alun Cairns, had “got himself in a bit of a mess and shot himself in the foot”.

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Cairns resigned as Welsh secretary last month following a row over how much he knew and when about his former aide’s role in the alleged sabotage of a rape trial. Despite a palpable loss of support, Cairns is standing once again to represent the Vale of Glamorgan, a seat he held under David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson. But Labour senses an opportunity, and so there is little surprise to find Corbyn on the final Saturday before election day in a zero-waste coffee shop in Barry, where he swaps a jar of blackberry and apple jam from his allotment for Dragon’s Breath jam from Penylan Preservesin Cardiff and has a stab at making a cappuccino.

National concerns are ever present: Corbyn, for instance, is asked about the source of documents he brandished earlier in the campaign, which the website Reddit said on Friday night were linked to a Russian interference campaign. Corbyn declined to disclose the source of the papers, which he had argued showed that the US was seeking “total market access” after the UK left the EU and therefore undermined Boris Johnson’s claims that the NHS would not be part of any trade talks. There is no suggestion the papers were fake.

“We obtained those documents,” the Labour leader insists in Barry. “We believed those documents to be correct and nobody until yesterday denied the correctness of those documents. The issue is there should be no interference in British politics by anybody else.”

Over at the social club, supporters were given a rallying call that ran through the injustices bestowed by the Tories, hammering home statistics on poverty, homelessness and deepening inequality.

For people like Christine Linley, a lifelong socialist and retired special needs worker, his message is compelling. About Cairns, she is scathing: “He hasn’t done anything for Barry.” Linley has lived in the town for 16 years with her partner and is canvassing for the first time, targeting homes around The Triangle where the majority of voters are over 45. “Equality has disappeared,” she says. “The difference between the very rich areas [in the constituency] and the ordinary has just become ridiculous. People really need a job and a bit of security here; Corbyn is the only hope for us.”

This Labour seaside town west of Cardiff is the third largest in Wales and a century ago was the largest coal-exporting port in the world. “Now, forget the high street – even our charity shops are closing down,” says Linley.

In a Londis shop, customers chat to shop assistant Osian Morris, 24, about the excitement up the road. “He’s epic – Corbyn is epic,” says Morris, who counts himself as a lifelong Labour supporter, “pretty much”. A researcher who gives her name as Marie chats to Morris about getting out to vote: she has come from Cardiff to campaign and has been on the phones “every night for the last two weeks in three-hour shifts” trying to convince constituents to vote the Vale red. “I’ve been talking to a lot of older people on landlines and a lot of them say they used to vote Labour but that they don’t like Corbyn – and yet when you press them on it, they can’t seem to give a reason why.”

The Vale of Glamorgan holds a number of traditionally Conservative wards including the affluent village of Cowbridge.

The Vale is a bellwether seat and local candidate Belinda Loveluck-Edwards is praised effusively by Corbyn on stage for her “fantastic energy” in an exhausting campaign.

“She carries the message of decency and social justice,” says Corbyn, reminding the room to “please take nothing for granted between now and Thursday”. Babies begin to grizzle but their parents roar as Corbyn makes a slapstick swipe at Boris Johnson and insists victory is nigh. “Our Labour government will go into office next week determined to change a lot of things very, very quickly,” he says. “I do not want to live in a country that relies on food banks, debt and handouts for ordinary working people.”

After 15 minutes, the crowd gathers for a mass selfie. Builder Gareth Jones, 60, says he has voted Liberal Democrats for most of his life but has been moved by Corbyn’s visit. “He’s an inspiration. This town is no different to any other under the Tories – it is suffering, but he offers hope.”

At beachfront diner Teddy T’s, where families are lunching on burgers and milkshakes, the election is an unwelcome distraction. One father shrugs at the mention of Corbyn: “I know he came. I’m not voting for him but I’m not going to run him out of town.”