If we really have passed ‘peak London’, what does that mean for Britain? | Andy Beckett

The capital may have fallen on hard times. But it still offers a defiantly different version of Englishness

London feels like a city that might be in trouble. The usual tourist crowds are gone. New towers of offices and overpriced flats stand empty. Recently extended railway stations are deserted for much of the day. Hundreds of shops have not survived lockdown. Thanks to Brexit and the pandemic, 700,000 foreign-born residents may have left the city since 2019: almost one Londoner in 13.

Politically, London has also fallen on hard times. Many of the government’s priorities – restricting immigration, “levelling up”, culture wars against urban liberalism, Brexit itself – are either implicitly or explicitly against the interests and values of the capital. The likely winner of this week’s London mayoral election, the Labour incumbent Sadiq Khan, is already quite a lonely figure: he is one of his party’s few holders of high-profile office, yet with limited powers, such as overseeing public transport, which the Conservatives are constantly trying to weaken further.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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