Britain is neuralgic about London. Here is one of the world’s great cities – arguably the greatest. It bustles with dynamism, innovation and life. It is a rich source of tax revenue. It is a magnet, and not only for the British. It is an advert for the best of what we can be – vigorously capitalist and progressive, multicultural, densely urban and yet a series of villages.
However, the fashion is to scorn this wonderful metropolis. It is too wealthy at the expense of the rest of the country – a lucky beneficiary of Britain’s excessive centralisation, runs the argument. It should be brought down so that others can breathe. There is a great truth in the charge of excessive political centralisation from which London benefits – but London also helps itself in ways others could emulate.
Bringing the capital down won’t help the rest of Britain prosper. In any case, Conservatives are happy to pull those levers of central power. What really stirs their ire is that London hosts a “metropolitan liberal elite” so out of touch that it voted Remain and even backed Jeremy Corbyn. Thus the BBC, ranking alongside the EU and anything that can be labelled “woke” as targets of Tory vitriol, is a worry because it is headquartered in London.
For you can rely on Londoners to champion gay pride, delight in foreign food, worry about the erosion of civil liberties, have vigils on Clapham Common protesting violence against women. They can also be relied upon to start businesses, trade anything in markets varying from the knick-knacks of Brick Lane to the London Metal Exchange, to have a punt on whatever and try out the new. They are instinctively open – but off with it and its head!
Thus last week the BBC announced it would scale back emphatically its London operations. The BBC always has been the least London-centric of our media institutions but, now fighting for its life, it has chosen to spread things around more – an open attempt to appease its Tory critics. Perhaps the unspoken message is for the BBC to cut itself off from the supply lines of liberal metropolitan comedians, writers and presenters and instead recruit from the backbone of the country – true Tory Brits – and so achieve “impartiality” on Conservative terms.
It won’t work, for here’s the rub. London is not a nine million-strong island of liberal elitism in an otherwise safe sea of conservatism. The same virus infects Bristol, Liverpool, Cardiff, Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Brighton, Edinburgh, Nottingham, Oxford ... anywhere, in fact, with a mass of young people, strong universities, vigorous theatre, new business startups and a network of great restaurants. Such places are prone to the temptations of openness.
They too share those liberal “elite” values, to having the gravest of doubts about the assault by Priti Pratel, the home secretary, on our tradition of peaceful protest. There is no future in the BBC dialling down on the material that feeds these people and trying to upscale a new supply line of Bernard Manning and Nigel Farage lookalikes. They are representatives only of the margin.
For Britain’s liberal culture is a source of strength – notwithstanding the opprobrium heaped on it by the right and “strategists” (defeatists?) close to Labour’s current leadership. Great businesses, medicine, technology, as with great art, do not spring from the world of those shaking their head saying it wasn’t like this in our day – the country has gone to the dogs, too many single mothers, hang ’em, flog ’em, keep out foreigners – which is the culture of most Tory party constituency associations and our conservative press.
Motivating workforces to excel, taking a risk in a difficult medical operation, turning a scientific breakthrough into a new business; all these require an optimism, a humanity and an openness which characterises London and British urban culture overall. The root of the capital’s success across so many domains is because of that liberal, optimistic openness which, paradoxically, a former Boris Johnson tapped into when he won two terms as London’s mayor.
That is also the reason why the current mayor, Sadiq Khan, will trump Shaun Bailey, his Tory challenger at the mayoral election in May. Khan could do London – and Labour – a favour, as could Andy Burnham in Manchester and other Labour mayoral contenders, by speaking up aggressively for the liberal tradition and for openness in the coming campaign.
Brexit is a mortal threat to our great cities, to London most of all. The City has been overtaken by Amsterdam as a share-trading centre for the first time since the 17th century and London’s many other markets – from contemporary art to fruit and veg at New Covent Garden – are feeling the pain. An exodus of Europeans has triggered a crisis in London’s great universities and hospitals and, symbolically, Eurostar – already reeling from Covid – is on the point of bankruptcy.
The London recovery summit last week launched an ambitious £544m plan. Good. However, it could and should have been accompanied by a rallying call for openness, close association with Europe and diversity – not just as values in themselves but as the very core of a London now under threat.
Take heart, however. Where London leads, the rest of the country has ultimately followed – whether challenging the divine right of monarchs or championing the tolerance of religion and same-sex love. The dominant strain in British culture is progressive, masked by an antediluvian voting system and the still flourishing symbols of a patriarchal feudal past – private schools, received pronunciation, the character of public honours.
In this respect Tory neuralgia about London’s vigorous liberalism is justified. It foretells their own demise.
• Will Hutton is an Observer columnist
