Remote work will free reluctant city dwellers and reinvigorate London
London has been the cradle of dreams and ambition for a long time. It is more than 600 years now since Dick Whittington left Gloucestershire to seek his fortune in the capital, rising to become lord mayor for the first time in 1397. Faint echoes of his journey remain with us all today: how many readers were born in other parts of the UK, or abroad, yet had an unspoken assumption that they would gravitate towards London to make a success of themselves?
The government’s “big idea” of levelling-up seems a challenge to all of that. Michael Gove and Andy Haldane are crafting the long-awaited white paper which will, we are promised, put flesh on the bones of this flagship policy and show us what Boris Johnson’s legacy was supposed to be.
At its heart, though, it must inevitably be an attempt to correct the centralisation of wealth and growth in London and the South-East which has been a feature of the British economy for many decades.
There is no doubt that London is disproportionately dominant in the UK. It produces nearly a quarter of our GDP, it has the largest stock exchange in Europe and, despite the doom-laden predictions of some who opposed Brexit, it continues to go toe-to-toe with New York for the unofficial title of the financial centre of the world. Many worry, understandably, that levelling-up will be a zero-sum game, that it can only make an impact by transferring some of the wealth and prosperity from the capital to the regions.
Twenty years ago it would have been difficult to see an alternative, but the great advances in technology and the lessons we have been forced to learn over the last two years of the pandemic have changed the game.
The world is shrinking. Even with our Victorian infrastructure, the UK is not a large country, and the development of HS2, however (ironically) slow and expensive, will make London more accessible still. So the physical attractions of the capital—culture, arts, theatre, museums—will retain their pull. People will still travel to see the V&A, or the National Gallery, or the West End.
The growth of regional museums, such as the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester and the V&A’s Dundee space, is likely to complement rather than challenge the draw of London as a cultural destination.
The much-vaunted “Great Resignation” may have a greater impact. The pandemic demonstrated the extraordinary untapped potential of remote working. While many employers are now keen to bring their workers back into offices, however those locations are adapted, we will not, nor should we seek to, see a total reversion to the status quo ante.
The necessity of lockdown showed us the virtue available to many members of the workforce. There are professions and trades which can now be seen as almost entirely unencumbered by location, allowing workers to seek domestic arrangements which suit them, while remaining electronically connected to a professional hub.
This should excite us. It does not mean the flight of professionals from London, but the relocation of those who are not necessarily happiest in the capital. Let them go, let them relocate, let them adapt. If it can ease the absurd pressure on London’s housing market for those who choose or have to remain, that can only be a good thing: the average house price recently hit £520,000, an all-time high, and that cannot be sustainable.
London needs to be involved in the levelling-up debate. We need to remind the government and the electorate that we are the UK’s economic powerhouse, and must not be seen as the enemy, but that we are, as much as the regions, committed to and enthusiastic about growth which spreads its benefits more widely.
This is, to use a metaphor dear to the prime minister, not about giving less cake to London and more to other areas, but making sure that there is more cake for everyone.
London should not, and will not, be challenged as the focus of many people’s professional and personal ambitions. It is a world city, an extraordinary melting pot of dazzling influences and cultures. Let us commit ourselves to finding a way for the other parts of the UK to grow and develop in sympathy, to ease the pressure on London a little, and let everyone benefit.