TWO tweets shot across my bows, so to speak, almost at the same time yesterday morning. The first was by Fraser Nelson, who told us that London is ‘a better city than it was a decade ago or, perhaps, at any time’.
I nearly choked on my coffee.
Fraser’s tweet also speculated on the bright side of the billionaire exodus, that it was lowering property prices for everyone’s benefit. Well, that’s not my understanding of London’s property market at the moment. The ‘not leaving altogether’ rich has made rental prices surge, which is something that has ‘filtered’ down to the lower end of the rental market on which most young people in London are dependent.
Further, it appears that for every British millionaire or billionaire property owner we lose, we gain more foreign ones. A quick check showed me that nearly half the London properties sold last year for more than £20million went to buyers from America and the Middle East.
Which has made the city even more multicultural at the very top than at the bottom, I suspect, if you ever walk the streets of Mayfair. It’s left us with a city of people from billionaires down to Uber drivers who have no real ties to the place. A city of ‘anywheres’ not ‘somewheres’ – for those of you who remember David Goodhart’s brilliant analysis of Britain’s divided people, The Road to Somewhere, of eight years ago.
The division is not just of wealth but also of culture and language. It’s not just certain boroughs like Tower Hamlets or Acton where you’d be forgiven for thinking you were somewhere in the Middle East but central London too. In Mayfair, Knightsbridge, Belgravia, Kensington and Chelsea you hear less and less English spoken on the street and it’s rare to be served by a British born person. Having lived in London for nearly all my adult years I have never known it so alien, so divided, more crowded, dirtier, less safe and less policed than now.
Having said that, I also know people like Fraser who still insist it is the best place in the world to live, who seem to be able to turn a blind eye to all the visible indications of its collapse and dysfunction.
That brings me to the second contrasting tweet by Matt Goodwin which went viral over the weekend. I am not surprised why. It documented all that happened to him on his day out in London on Saturday.
The tweet ricocheted around social media and prompted Goodwin to write about the deeper questions it raised about our capital city.
‘Over the last decade I’ve watched a toxic cocktail of rapid demographic change, mass immigration, and economic stagnation push our once great city into managed decline and make it completely unrecognisable.’
His article references the above-mentioned David Goodhart whose compelling and insightful essay in London’s Standard last week on London’s demographics he pointed up:
‘White Britons now represent less than one-third of London. Only one in five children in Greater London’s schools are white British. Four in ten Londoners were born overseas. Close to one in five are Muslim. Nearly one-quarter do not speak English as their main language. Almost half of all social housing in London is now headed by somebody who was not born in Britain. And those homes enjoy a rental subsidy, from the British taxpayer, of more than £4billion every year.’
Chew on that, Fraser Nelson! How does that help the general housing market (sales and rentals) for those who were born in Britain?
Is all this demographic change improving the quality of life for Londoners, Goodwin asks?
No, hardly:
- Shoplifting in London is soaring, up 54 per cent in the last year, compared with 15 per cent across the country.
- Housing is now beyond reach for most Londoners as demand has pushed property prices and rents sky-high.
- Home ownership, since the early 1990s, has crashed by 20 per cent. London rents over the last 15 years have surged 83 per cent, while earnings increased by only 21 per cent – a housing crisis undoubtedly exacerbated by mass migration.
‘If London really is the future’, Goodhart asks, ‘if it inspires such confidence and optimism, then why does it have, by far, one of the lowest fertility rates in the country? People not wanting to have babies is a pretty good indicator of not just a cost-of-living crisis but, at a deeper level, how they feel about the surrounding social contract.’
To this list Goodwin adds further facts.
- Violence against women and girls in London has increased sharply and remains ‘endemic’.
- Homelessness and rough sleeping are up.
- Violent offences in London are up 35 per cent on a decade ago.
- Knife crime surged by over 20 per cent in the last year alone, as gang violence has become a depressing, everyday feature of London life.
- While ‘theft from the person’ fell by 14 per cent in England last year, in London it rocketed by 41 per cent.
- Robberies are also up 10 per cent. ‘Moped-enabled crimes’ are booming.
- Pickpocketing is up 38 per cent in a year.
No one is immune, as Selina Scott’s frightening account of her stabbing attack and mugging in Saturday’s Daily Mail illustrates all too graphically.
So who do you agree with? Is London ‘so over’ or is it better than ever? Is it salvageable?
Answers below the line!
