London: A place for everyone*

*Exclusions may apply.

Written by J William Browne

The start of a New Year is a universally painful experience. The joy of Christmas is over, the anticipation of the festive season long-forgotten, and the advice of eating, drinking and making merry starting to present long-term consequences. In an act of hope or masochism, some make resolutions. Those resolved to better themselves jog through the bleak midwinter drizzle, past the dumped corpses of Christmas trees or recycling boxes of empty bottles, before returning home to a supper of tap water and curly kale. These weeks are bitter. Bitter as kale. For these and many other reasons besides, the start of a New Year is universally painful.

Unless, of course, you do not celebrate Christmas or live outside the northern hemisphere. Or, indeed, if you do not end your year at December 31^st.

In London, the fireworks on New Years Eve are an institution watched around the country. This year’s display launched the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan’s new campaign for the capital city ‘London: A Place for Everyone’. Accompanying the fireworks was a voiceover of 2023 in review for the UK; celebrating the crowning of King Charles III, 75 years of the National Health Service, 10 years since legalising same sex marriage and 75 years since the arrival of the Empire Windrush. Our new King, now onto his second marriage to a distant cousin, told us how our society is “woven from diverse threads… though drawn from different parts of the world, they collectively enrich the fabric of our national life”. A voice spoke about London being a city where you are “free to be who you want to be and love who you want to love”. Stephen Fry told us that “we have to keep showing how we love our NHS.” Finally, a voice narrating the significance of Windrush stated confidently that it was the people who arrived from the Commonwealth that “made this city strong”. 

London is a welcoming city to foreign influences and is built on real diversity, past and present. But how inclusive are we really? The Mayor’s fireworks led me to ask this question and to wonder whether there should be an asterisk after the the city’s new slogan: ‘London: A place for everyone*’.

Who does ‘everyone’ exclude? 

It is a recurring question with many different answers depending on when and where you ask it, even if it is always implied rather than voiced out loud. The philosopher Slavoj Žižek has observed that Beethoven’s Ode to Joy has been employed by an incredibly diverse cast of political regimes over the years. The warmth of the melody and uplifting lyrics have been found to embody distinct ideals of universal solidarity and fraternity:

‘Thy magic power reunites, 

All that custom has divided

All men become brothers

Under the sway of thy gentle wings.’

Ode to Joy is the unofficial anthem of the European Union, covering 27 countries, 450 million people, numerous cultures and languages. Moving to the racist far right, it was also the unofficial national anthem of Southern Rhodesia, when the territory declared independence from the UK following the end of apartheid. Lurching to the genocidal far left, Beethoven’s ode was one of the only pieces of western music to be permitted in China following Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. And finally, in a demonstration of real ideological flexibility, it was used by both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in the Second World War to emphasise the brotherhood of Communism and Fascism respectively. 

Ode to Joy, it would seem, is an anthem for everyone. 

But for all of these groups, ‘everyone’ was or is an exclusive category determined by nationality, race or ideology. I’m picking on the Mayor of London’s seemingly inclusive message, but the sentiment of his new campaign is widely held in the capital. The Mayor knows his audience. Londoners tend to maintain a certain left-wing idealism which is, according to the British Social Attitudes Survey in 2021, pro-welfare, socially liberal and more likely to support individual freedoms over conforming to common rules. On average, we tend to be younger, better-educated and more cosmopolitan than the average Briton. But even though everyone may be welcome in London, that doesn’t mean that anyone is welcome. 

In a non-scientific personal diversion, my ‘lived experience’ as a 30 year old Londoner that doesn’t automatically subscribe to the latest liberal software update has been one of feeling the ideological outsider in both social and professional settings. Growing up just east of London in the provincial county of Essex and moving to the capital as an adult, I have once again found myself on the border line between two domestic extremes; liberal London and conservative Essex. Two ‘places for everyone’ with opposite criteria for inclusion. To know whether this third group, if indeed it is a group, is a silent majority or an apathetic minority has been rendered an impossible question to answer by both sides of the cultural divide. The opposing camps have left little common ground remaining for almost everyone meet on.

‘Polarisation’ is a word that turns most people off; it sounds like the title of an Adam Curtis documentary on penguins. But the political reality of the two poles going cold on each other has meant that democracy can no longer presume that it is the only show in town. Polling has consistently found that the younger you are, the less faith you have in democracy and her institutions. The figures should be alarming to democrats. APM research showed in January 2023 that compared to 78% of all Americans, only 53% of Americans aged 18-25 thought that democracy is the best political system in all circumstances. A figure which is only slightly higher globally, at 57% among 18-35 year olds (Open Society).

From a Western perspective this may appear very odd. Politicians and democratic institutions across the West have broadly accepted the radically progressive views most fervently held by the Millennial and Gen Z generations, as demonstrated in the Mayor of London’s firework sermon on New Year’s Eve. It is the new moral threshold for inclusion in the ‘everyone’ group. But perhaps this approach is precisely why younger generations are so disillusioned. Let’s be cynical. The establishment presents progressive fireworks for the kids whilst ensuring that nothing changes in the state of the economy that would actually improve their material prospects. High above a city where most young people cannot afford to live or start a family, the fireworks give the illusion of a real bang.

Is it any wonder that a group with little or no stake in society to conserve do not see democracy as the default? In line with this trend, young Europeans are overwhelmingly turning out to vote for populist candidates promising immigration controls, housing for citizens born in their country and a cooling relationship with the European Union. Politicians like Giorgia Meloni in Italy, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, Marine le Pen in France, and parties like the Sweden Democrats and Vox in Spain are all seeing their vote share among the under 35s grow as their domestic populations age. Where the established parties failed to respond to the 2008 economic crash and ongoing refugee crisis, the populists have found an electorate. Young Italian, French, Dutch, Spanish and Swedish voters, to name a few, are becoming far more exclusive as to who is included their vision of ‘everyone’. 

In the UK, however, we like to buck a European trend. While in the capitals of continental Europe there is a growing fashion of Paris, Rome and Amsterdam First, Sadiq Khan is declaring London a place for everyone. 

But who is excluded from our utopia? 

Within the context of populism’s rise, we can dispense with at least one adherent in Donald Trump. Sadiq Khan has beef with Trump, declaring in 2017 that the then-President wasn’t welcome in the UK, let alone London. Trump had shared videos on Twitter from the far right Britain First group and misrepresented the Mayor following a terrorist attack on London Bridge, leading to a public spat. Khan was broadly celebrated for this position in London and the country beyond that takes a dim view of an American brashness which Mr Trump caricatures so well. But given his relative lack of status and power, the declaration was little more than a pat on Khan’s own head. 

Even so, the former President is a fairly good example of who ‘everyone’ excludes and why. Democratic institutions are failing to deal with the rise of populist figures like Trump and the challenge they present to liberal orthodoxies in not pretending to represent or welcome ‘everyone’ in their vision of reality. In other words, those that divide openly. His infamous wall along the US’s southern border is emblematic of this, along with the former President's trenchant positioning as the outsider that would turn the Washington swamp into a desert. 

Geert Wilders is another populist that has been refused entry to the UK. In 2017 Wilders was turned back at London Heathrow airport because, in the view of the Home Office, his opinions "threaten community harmony and therefore public safety". Wilders was due to show a controversial film about 9/11 in the British Parliament where shots of the twin towers being destroyed were interspersed with quotations from the Quran. This followed his first refusal on entry in 2009, which he appealed against and won. Along with Trump, one would presume that the refusal of entry, performative or not, will become more difficult to justify in the future. Wilders, who has softened his public views on Islam, looks set to become the next Dutch Prime Minister after his party won the most seats in the November 2023 parliamentary elections on a wave of youth support. 

How democracy responds, or fails to respond, to populism may be the question for 2024. So many pivotal elections are in play this year. In anticipation, institutions are moving from cynical inclusion of the populists to explicit exclusion as the threat to those institutions themselves is emboldened by success, as can be seen in the media coverage and political rhetoric around the US election. 

Why is the democratic response proving so impotent?

Trump, Wilders and the other successful modern populists mentioned above embody the shorthand expression used by the British upper classes to sort the wheat from the Chavs in polite conversation: “P.L.U” (People Like Us). This is not a simple demographic group as the modern left would have us believe; it is an attitude where the ‘people like us’ simply excludes ‘them’. It is a group as exclusive as those singing of ‘humanity’ in Ode to Joy. 

The centrists disagree with the explicitly divisive stance, but they cannot deny the populists’ growing success in telling compelling stories direct to specific groups. Like the Mayor of London, the Trumps of this world know their audience, but know them well enough to be able to disregard the rest. Why try and unite when dividing is such a vote winner? 

The competing abstract story told by liberals for the past few decades has failed for the precisely the opposite reason. It may be best summarised as ‘the circle of life’ theory of society, which, of course, is a circle only according to those at the top of the food chain in the Lion King. ‘Everyone’ cannot break into song about how joyous a survival of the fittest is while also being eaten by lions. Exclusions apply. The animals lower down the food chain have long known this, but have not had champions for their species’ cause until recently. Some, in the case of young voters, have never had a champion. 

It may be, however, that establishment figures like the Mayor of London have been quietly learning lessons from the populists “threatening community harmony”. The Mayor’s campaign of London as a place for everyone makes much play of the international character of the capital; ‘from Lagos to Hackney, from Lublin to Ladbroke Grove, from Punjab to Hillingdon’ (a ‘from Leicester to Barking’ is included for domestic balance). The national context to this global welcome is a Conservative government in Westminster that has lost control of immigration, despite this being the central reason the country voted for Brexit. Upon this failure and with an election looming, in a fit of populist idealism designed to win votes from a party even further to the right, the Tories have developed an almost fanatical obsession with sending illegal immigrants to Rwanda.

In seeking to grow the international population of London, Khan is practising the creed which was supposedly behind New Labour’s liberalising of mass immigration in the late 1990s and early 2000s, of "rubbing the Right's nose in diversity”. The party’s radically liberalised immigration policy in this period was attributed to Andrew Neather, a former adviser to then Prime Minister Tony Blair and Immigration minister Barbara Roche. As Neather wrote himself in 2012:

‘there was a reluctance elsewhere in government to discuss what increased immigration would mean, above all for Labour's core white working-class vote. This shone through even in the published report: the "social outcomes" it talks about are solely those for immigrants. And this first-term immigration policy got no mention among the platitudes on the subject in Labour's 1997 manifesto, headed Faster, Firmer, Fairer…

…Part by accident, part by design, the Government had created its longed-for immigration boom.

But ministers wouldn't talk about it. In part they probably realised the conservatism of their core voters: while ministers might have been passionately in favour of a more diverse society, it wasn't necessarily a debate they wanted to have in working men's clubs in Sheffield or Sunderland.

In part, too, it would have been just too metropolitan an argument to make in such places: London was the real model.’

Twenty-five years on, the mandate is still lacking whilst the platitudes have become an ideological dogma of their own. ‘Diversity is our city’s greatest strength’ in Khan’s own words. But leaving aside the leftist theology, the important question to ask is how inclusive the benefits are from the city’s greatest strength? Do they include everyone? 

Socially and culturally, most certainly, but not without reservation. Economically? Well, definitely not every Londoner.

The median price of a house in London is £515,000 which is double the UK median of £270,000, and over eighteen times the median yearly salary before tax. Deposits in the capital are astronomical. The average deposit is £125,000, twice the UK average at £62,000. House prices have been grossly inflated by the billions in property speculation invited from abroad, allowing some Londoners to share in the new wealth, but also pricing many out of the city entirely. Rents follow the same trajectory which gets sharper each year, meaning that saving for a deposit and the dream of home ownership recedes into the future. Along with the hairlines and family plans of the would-be first time buyers brought up in London. 

So our city is a place for everyone, if you can afford to live here. The utopian logic of collective enrichment in inviting the world to London only makes sense when valued in pounds and pence. 

Reading through the detail of an inclusion strategy that accompanies the Mayor’s campaign and seeks to address issues of affordability, you may feel the utopian spirit a little dampened. Beyond the fine words and anticipated phrases, there is nothing within the document that reads as if it will radically alter the fact that London is an increasingly exclusive city for the very wealthy. A group which fewer and fewer young people can rise to. In this sense, the Mayor’s strategy is consistent with a modern left that seems resigned to economic inequality in favour of advocating for metropolitan utopia. 

But this wilfully ignores the populist iceberg that Western democracy has already hit. In a context of rising economic inequality in the UK and a worsening global refugee crisis, the logical end result of London being a place for everyone may look like the equivalent of rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. But in fact, the approach reflects a desire to sell places in the lifeboats to the highest bidder as our society sinks to the ocean floor. 

The conclusion I draw is that, like utopias, places for everyone do not exist. They cannot exist. There is always a smell test to pass, a limit on space, a financial threshold for entry. And while the populists divide openly in their definition of who is included in this group, liberal politicians’ rhetoric of inclusion and diversity is just as narrow beneath the surface. As a result, young people unserved by the platitudes are beginning to look for radical alternatives. We can only hope a third option presents itself soon. As, even if we do not fall to the populists in our young city, a ‘London for everyone’ may still be as exclusive as the groups signing Ode to Joy. 

Another choir preaching to itself.