A new high-status opinion just dropped: London is fine. From their converted Edwardian houses in the leafy suburbs where you won\u2019t get a burger for less than 15 quid, London\u2019s preening opinion-shapers have taken to X to say all is well in the capital. Ignore the \u2018Trumpist\u2019 talking points about London going down the swanny, they cry between glugs of pinot noir \u2013 life\u2019s never been better! One envisions the grimaces of people on the other side of town when they see such hot takes pop up on their mobile phones that they cling to for dear life lest some wanker on a stolen Lime bike should snatch them.<\/p>\n
The internet is fizzing with this big question: \u2018Is London a shithole?\u2019 What\u2019s funny is that proper Londoners have this discussion all the time. Sometimes we say it is, if we\u2019ve had a rotten day, and other times we\u2019ll be squaring up to any funny-accented outsider who talks shit about our city. But now the London question, like everything else, has fallen into the doom-loop churn of the culture war. It\u2019s become fodder for digital posturing. \u2018It\u2019s a crime-ridden hellhole\u2019, says the Very Online right. \u2018It\u2019s fine\u2019, say rich liberals in airy flats. Not for the first time, both are wrong.<\/p>\n
The most wrong \u2013 or certainly the most annoying \u2013 are the \u2018London is fine\u2019 lot. There\u2019s a Marie Antoinette vibe to their digital missives. \u2018Let them eat sourdough bread!\u2019, they might as well cry. It\u2019s typified by Lewis Goodall of The News Agents, the podcast for rich, glum liberals still not over Brexit. London, he said<\/a>, is being falsely talked down as a dreadful place where \u2018crime is completely out of control\u2026 fare evasion is completely rampant\u2026 [and] the Tube is looking like Gotham City\u2019. It\u2019s all \u2018exaggerated\u2019, he says.<\/p>\n I\u2019m going to put my neck on the line and propose that Mr Goodall\u2019s London life is rather more plush and cossested than most others\u2019. A couple of years back he told the Evening Standard<\/a> he lives in Norbury, a very middle-class and \u2013 sorry, Lewis \u2013 soulless suburb in the south-east where crime is low<\/a> and deprivation virtually non-existent. Apparently he feasts on \u2018Gallic fare at Pique-Nique\u2019 \u2013 no, me neither \u2013 and loves tucking into \u2018pelmeni\u2019 in Soho with his equally starry media pals. Thankfully, for thickos like me, the Standard explained what pelmeni is: Russian dumplings.<\/p>\n He does boxercise in East Dulwich. He loves gardening because \u2018it\u2019s the opposite of modern life\u2019. He wants to ban cars. Right, so he\u2019s that London. The other London. The London I didn\u2019t even know existed until I hit my 20s. The London where you\u2019re unlikely to encounter a crackhead on a night bus \u2013 mainly because you can afford Ubers \u2013 or a mumbling masked prick saying, \u2018Gimme your phone\u2019. Goodall\u2019s co-host, Jon Sopel, agreed with him that London-bashing is a \u2018Trump import\u2019. That\u2019ll be the Jon Sopel<\/a> who lives in Belsize Park, gets to work via a \u2018beautiful walk across Primrose Hill\u2019, buys his suits from Richard James on Savile Row and tells anyone who\u2019ll listen that \u2018Duke\u2019s has the best Martini\u2019s in London\u2019. I wonder where he skis?<\/p>\n Enjoying spiked?<\/p>\n Why not make an instant, one-off donation?<\/p>\n We are funded by you. Thank you!<\/p>\n \n \u00a35 Choose an amount<\/p>\n \n Donate now\n <\/p>\n \n Please wait… <\/p>\n Boil it down and this is just classist indifference. \u2018My London is fab, so what are the rest of you moaning about?\u2019 I bet all the overnight converts to the high-status pro-London position likewise live in parts of the city unsullied by kerb-mounting e-bikes and tinny music on public transport. They think they\u2019re cocking a snook at the right but in truth they\u2019re advertising their blissful disregard for their fellow Londoners who they must know live in different conditions. Brushing the crumbs of their Gallic dinners from their Savile Row suits, they say: \u2018Wait, not all of London is like this? Oh well. Too bad.\u2019<\/p>\n If these people ever stepped out of the media bubble that they mistake for a city, they might see that while London is not a hellhole it is a little broken. Try Harlesden. Or Tower Hamlets. I\u2019ll take you to my birthplace of Burnt Oak if you like, which has seen better days. They don\u2019t have pelmeni but they have some mean fried chicken. Everyone you talk to will have a lament about London. They\u2019ll bemoan the crime, the unfriendliness, the dangerous dogs, the marijuana smell, the yapping teens, the rudeness, the inability even of their ailing nan to get a seat on the bus. They haven\u2019t been brainwashed by Trumpist propaganda \u2013 they really do sense a fraying of the bonds that city life relies upon.<\/p>\n Some centrists wave around graphs showing crime has declined in London. They catastrophically miss the point. Sure, some crimes have fallen, but others have surged. Like shoplifting<\/a>. There was a 54 per cent hike in that most grating petty crime between 2023 and 2024. But the point is not that London is the new Bogot\u00e1. It\u2019s that it feels tetchy, acrimonious even, like a city of lonely, clashing souls rather than a collective of citizens. After a day of seeing people dodge the fare you just paid for, and being subjected to the noisy piffle of everyone\u2019s FaceTimed conversations, and almost having your head taken off by some arsehole on an e-bike delivering dirty burgers to the feckless middle classes, you start to feel less like the citizen of a great city than the NPC in a videogame of someone else\u2019s life.<\/p>\n The left underestimates at its peril how concerning such social fraying is for the working classes in particular. \u2018Everyday insecurity hurts the poor much more than the rich who live calmly in their gated communities\u2019, says Slavoj Zizek<\/a>. There\u2019s no denying it, he said: there are \u2018clear signs of the growing decay of manners [and] of youthful gangs terrorising public spaces\u2019. And it isn\u2019t \u2018reactionatory\u2019 to talk about it. On the contrary, the slow-motion corrosion of the social oaths that make city life possible and good is a major \u2018domain of dissatisfaction\u2019 for working people, he says, and politicians should address it.<\/p>\n Too right. I say we reject both the denialism of the \u2018London is fine\u2019 elites in their morally gated communities and the doomerism of digital rightists who might realise London ain\u2019t so bad if they ever bothered to visit. London\u2019s still the greatest city on Earth. It\u2019s just going through a rough patch as a consequence of the hyper-individuating lunacy of identity politics and the moral relativism of elites that too often turn a blind eye to bad behaviour. This mad, mettlesome, symphonic city can be fixed, but we really have to want it.<\/p>\n Brendan O\u2019Neill<\/strong> is spiked\u2019s chief political writer and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O\u2019Neill Show<\/a>. Subscribe to the podcast here<\/a>. His new book \u2013 After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation \u2013 is available to order on Amazon UK<\/a> and Amazon US<\/a> now. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy<\/a><\/p>\n Who funds spiked? You do<\/p>\n We are funded by you. And in this era of cancel culture and advertiser boycotts, we rely on your donations more than ever. Seventy per cent of our revenue comes from our readers\u2019 donations \u2013 the vast majority giving just \u00a35 per month. If you make a regular donation \u2013 of \u00a35 a month or \u00a350 a year \u2013 you can become a \u00a0and enjoy:<\/p>\n \u2013Ad-free reading It\u2019s the best way to keep spiked going \u2013 and growing. Thank you!<\/p>\n
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