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David Leam: Why Crossrail 2 remains right for London

Despite some new difficulties for the project, it is essential for the future of the capital
David Leam

Steve Norris has a long and distinguished record in championing better transport in London. But he’s off track in his criticism of Crossrail 2, the planned north-south cross-London rail route (“We need to think again about Crossrail 2“, 6 January).

Steve rightly recognises London’s looming transport capacity problems – the sort of pressures that we already see in crazily overcrowded tubes and commuter rail services, which will get far worse as the city’s population nudges 10 million towards the end of the next decade. Where I differ with Steve is that I continue to see Crossrail 2 – which would link the national rail networks in Surrey and Hertfordshire with tunnels under London between Wimbledon in the south and Tottenham Hale and New Southgate in the north – as the first best solution to this capacity crunch.

Steve points out various local problems with some of the plans, including in Wimbledon and Balham. More important, he thinks it’s too expensive and instead suggests “much more affordable improvements”, such as the planned Bakerloo Line Extension.

Let’s deal with those local issues first. Steve is quite right to highlight some of the problem areas on the Crossrail 2 route, as set out at the last public consultation in 2015. Every project has its tricky local hotspots, which require extensive local consultation and detailed technical work to address. The good news is that the Crossrail 2 team have done this work and now have vastly improved proposals for key sections of the route, such as a choice between Balham and Tooting as a stop, and by looking at what Crossrail 2 means to Wimbledon town centre. The bad news is that local communities in these areas are none the wiser about proposed changes, and will remain in the dark until the Department for Transport agrees to Transport for London publishing revised plans. This must be a priority for 2019.

That leaves the wider strategic case for Crossrail 2 – and I my view that is stronger than ever. Crossrail 2 is a radical solution: rather than tackling a clutch of problems piecemeal, it brings the solution to them together. It will relieve the chronic congestion on the south west main line into Waterloo. It will relieve crowding on the Tube, especially on the Northern Line in south London. It will stem the rising numbers of regular station closures due to overcrowding, which are forecast to become steadily more numerous. It will cut congestion on the great eastern line into Liverpool Street. And it will ensure that passengers arriving on HS2 will actually be able to get on the Underground at Euston, rather than creating a giant bottleneck.

In total Crossrail 2 will increase the city’s rail capacity by around 10 per cent, bringing an additional 270,000 into Central London each morning peak time. And at the same time, it will deliver a huge boost for housing. The railway is deliberately routed through some of the parts of north-east London most desperately in need of regeneration, in Enfield’s Upper Lee Valley. Crossrail 2 will support tens of thousands of new homes there, making those areas attractive to develop where at present their very poor transport services prevent that. Altogether, it will support the building of some 200,000 new homes across London and the South East.

Certainly, Crossrail 2 is an expensive project, estimated to cost up to £30 billion. But it will generate benefits to the wider economy worth many times that amount. London’s experience with Crossrail 1 demonstrated the potential to secure funding contributions from a range of beneficiaries beyond just the hard-pressed taxpayer, which to some extent can be replicated by Crossrail 2. The joint DfT-GLA Independent Affordability Review on Crossrail 2, which I supported through its advisory panel, identified a wide range of potential funding and financing options, as well as promising scope to reduce and reprofile costs. Our report is with the Mayor and ministers awaiting a response.  

There’s no doubt that the delays and cost overruns on Crossrail 1 make the near-term funding challenge for Crossrail 2 a degree harder. It would be naïve to pretend otherwise. Short-term progress may, as a result, be slower than supporters had previously hoped. But what London’s – indeed Britain’s – infrastructure now needs is a plan for the long term – one that looks decades ahead, not just a couple of years.

Thankfully, we have been given the blueprint for just such a plan by the independent National Infrastructure Commission, which published its plan for Britain’s infrastructure through to 2050 just last year. This backed Crossrail 2 as an essential and affordable component of a UK-wide investment programme, alongside other vital schemes such as Northern Powerhouse Rail, which will connect some of our great northern cities. Crossrail 2 will stop our capital from grinding to a halt. Both projects will drive growth and productivity and benefit the whole of the UK economy. The government now needs to set out a long term plan that commits to both.

Crossrail 2 is a grand and ambitious infrastructure scheme, as befits Europe’s largest and most dynamic city and the economic heart of the UK. It remains the right solution for London’s future. If we duck the decision now, we will deeply regret it in the 2030s.

David Leam is Executive Director, Infrastructure at leading business organisation London First, which is strongly supportive of Crossrail 2. More on that here.

Categories: Comment
Tags: Bakerloo Line, Balham, Crossrail, Crossrail 2, Department for Transport, Euston, Greater London Authority, HS2, London Underground, Northern Line, public transport, Steve Norris, Tooting, Transport for London, Wimbledon

Dave Hill: Sadiq Khan speaks for London on Brexit but the city’s leavers matter too

The capital is a strongly Remain city, but the 1.5 Londoners who wanted out of the EU must not be forgotten by its mayor and or his political challengers
Dave Hill

Sadiq Khan’s grasp of the majority mood in the capital has only rarely looked less than assured and his stance on Brexit demonstrates extremely well that he knows which side his electoral bread is buttered. His arrival in the House of Commons public gallery last night as MPs prepared to sink Theresa May’s EU withdrawal deal to the bottom of the Thames sent a message as loud and clear as his cute appropriation of the New Year’s fireworks display for his London Is Open campaign. In a 60 per cent Remain city, this is a 100 per cent Remain Mayor.

Later, he was on the telly articulating his line, also punched out in an evening press release, that the Prime Minister should do what is required to rule out a “no deal” exit, that a big rethink should take place, and that “in the absence of a general election, the British public must be allowed to decide what happens next”. His view was perfectly aligned with that of Jasmine Whitbread, chief executive of business organisation London First, and his plea on “no deal’ was also made in a letter to the PM, co-signed by the mayors of Greater Manchester and the Liverpool City Region and the leader of Newcastle City Council.

By contrast, as I write Shaun Bailey, his Brexit-backing Conservative challenger for the mayoralty, has mustered not even a tweet about last night’s extraordinary parliamentary events. Of course, unlike the City Hall incumbent, Bailey could not have hoped to get a share of last night’s Brexit drama limelight, but at some stage his campaign will surely need to embrace this momentous national issue, which matters massively to London and to many Londoners. London Mayors cannot make or unmake Brexit national policy, but it is part of their job to make their view about it known. The same goes for mayoral candidates.

The time will come when Bailey will be asked to articulate his position in detail. In September, the Evening Standard, whose anti-Brexit position has not stopped it from running a string of puff pieces in support of Bailey, reported him saying he is “not a Brexiteer in that crazy sense of ‘let’s just leave'” and promising he will be “talking to Londoners about how we get the best deal,” but little else has been heard from him lately.

That needs to change, not least because London’s Leavers matter. They might be very much in the minority but they are a hefty one, comprising more than 1.5 million voters in 2016. Tory jibes that more Londoners voted Leave than voted for Khan earlier in the same year are questionable – it all depends on how you define “voted for” – but however you look at it, that is a lot of Londoners. And speaking up for them is not only a job for the Brexiter Tory hopeful. It is a job, or ought to be, for Mayor Khan too, especially as the heat is very far from going out of the Brexit debate.

London’s preference for Remain is a reflection and confirmation of the city’s branding and its baked-in self image as an international, outward-looking global metropolis. But the rise of this triumphant, culturally kaleidoscopic London – the London of the 2012 Olympics – is nonetheless felt by some Londoners as a loss, and eurosceptic Londoners aren’t confined to older white people in Hillingdon and Romford. Worries about immigration, the pace and character of change, and erosion of cultural identity are expressed by Londoners of many colours and heritages.

These Londoners’ voices should be more widely heard and their concerns acknowledged. That does not mean accommodating the poison put about by UKIP, a party which, in any case, a massive 67 per cent of Londoners would never, ever vote for, according to the recent YouGov poll for Queen Mary University. What it does mean is recognising that London’s proud and dazzling embrace of immigration and diversity does not necessarily delight all Londoners and that ignoring their disquiet risks undermining the remarkable degree of unity this city of 300 languages enjoys.

It is in the interests of both Bailey and Khan to do this: the former, because speaking clearly and constructively for London’s Leavers will surely help him secure their votes in 2020; the latter, because his mayoral standing could only be enhanced by it without diluting his Remain credentials or ability to represent the majority view. And if there is to be a second referendum or “peoples’ vote”, any victory for Remain would need to be a big one if the EU issue is to be resolved. The Mayor’s championing of Remain is both justifiable and politically shrewd, but he would be wise to also reassure London’s Leavers that they count for something too.

 

 

 

 

 

Categories: Comment
Tags: Brexit, Conservatives, Evening Standard, Jasmine Whitbread, Labour, London First, Sadiq Khan, Shaun Bailey, YouGov

Bob Neill MP: Why I will be supporting Theresa May’s Brexit deal

Now is not the time for ideological puritanism but for mature politics and compromise
Bob Neill

No sooner had dawn broken on 24 June 2016 than talk began of Londoners barricading themselves within the confines of the M25, a separatist state of Remainers committed to a future inside the European Union. Whilst most of those proposing this did so very much tongue in cheek, a serious question was posed. How do we reconcile a national vote to Leave with the very different outcome in London, a city that prides itself on being an open, global metropolis, that thrives on the service economy and has close ties with the continent, and in which some 59.9 per cent of the population (and in certain boroughs, more than 70 per cent) voted to Remain?

This dilemma, which many London MPs have been grappling with over the past two years, is, for many, a deeply personal one. I have lived and worked in London my entire life, and have had the privilege of representing its residents, at every level of government, since I was 21 years old. Through the intervening 40 plus years, I have made no secret of my belief that we have incalculably benefited – economically, socially and culturally – from our close ties with our European neighbours. That belief has not changed.

Notwithstanding my dislike of the outcome, as a democrat I respect the vote that was delivered through the referendum and believe it is incumbent on all of us in parliament – whatever our starting position – to step up to the plate, cut through the complexities that have arisen, and find a practical way forward that delivers an orderly departure from the EU.

Quite patently, however, the vote to Leave was not a mandate for the sort of hard Brexit some of my colleagues now advocate. On that basis, I have sought throughout this process to nullify the threat of a no deal exit, which would, on any measure, set Britain back a generation, and would be particularly hard felt in our capital.

To those who have labelled me, and other likeminded colleagues, a traitor, mutineer, or one of any number of haphazard derivatives, I say this: now is not the time for ideological puritanism and rigid dogma. Politics is the art of the possible, and cool pragmatism, rooted in hard-headed reality, not theory, is required. That is why I’ll be supporting the Prime Minister’s deal tomorrow.

True, it is not perfect, but it’s the best plan on the table to protect jobs and support businesses, pulling our country back together and fulfilling the promises that have been made, which must now be kept. Crucially, by providing a transition period, from which we can negotiate our future relationship with the EU27, it allows us to avoid the sort of cliff-edge Brexit a no deal would entail, and which on Friday, the Confederation of British Industry reaffirmed would cause “profound, widespread and lasting” economic consequences. That is why they, and other key organisations in our capital, including the City of London Corporation and City UK, support the deal.

Like those representative bodies, I would prefer not to be leaving at all. But the Withdrawal Agreement is the only available option that extracts us from the EU whilst ensuring we remain on the straight and narrow. The most likely alternatives – no deal, or a second referendum – which I recognise enjoys significant traction in London, and which I have some sympathy with – carry too much risk and uncertainty, the ultimate anathema to businesses, large and small.

Compromise is a mark of mature politics, and that is what the Prime Minister’s deal is about. It certainly doesn’t give me everything I want, nor will it fulfil every wish of my Brexiteer colleagues, but it gets the job done, and more importantly, gets it done sensibly. It also offers solutions to the unique set of challenges London faces where the alternatives offer dead ends. That is why I’ll be following my head, not my heart, into the voting lobby tomorrow and supporting the deal.

Bob Neill is the MP for Bromley & Chislehurst.

Categories: Comment
Tags: Brexit, Bromley & Chislehurst, City of London Corporation, Confederation of British Industry, Theresa May

Sarah Hayward: Labour’s leadership won’t help Londoners stop Brexit

If anything, Jeremy Corbyn's approach makes "no deal' more likely
Sarah Hayward

Theresa May is going to lose the vote on her Brexit deal on Tuesday, and the Tories’ lack of a majority and failure to gain the support of enough of their own MPs mean it matters what Labour, as the official opposition, does next. It will have a massive impact on the future of country, London included. What are the dynamics at play?

It’s worth spelling out just how London-centric Labour’s top table is. The key shadow cabinet positions are all held by London MPs: Jeremy Corbyn represents Islington North, Emily Thornberry Islington South & Finsbury, Keir Starmer Holborn & St Pancras, John McDonnell Hayes & Harlington, Barry Gardiner Brent North and Diane Abbott Hackney North & Stoke Newington.

Add to this the fact that the majority of Labour’s massive membership is London-based and, on the surface, the potential seems there for the party to help a Remain-supporting capital to either stop Brexit altogether or at least to secure a Brexit that includes a very close future relationship with Europe. But closer inspection reveals a very different picture – one in which no deal far is more likely than no Brexit and a London-centric Labour Party fails to take an approach in line with what most Londoners want. 

Labour’s official position – wanting a general election – is for the birds. I have no doubt they sincerely want one, it’s just that they do not have (and have never had) any meaningful mechanism for getting one unless Tory MPs decide to commit political suicide and vote to bring down their own Prime Minister. That is not impossible, but it is not in Labour’s gift to make it happen. Labour also says it has kept “all options on the table” and that no deal will be disastrous for the country. So, what will they do next?

Those pinning their hopes on Labour coming out swinging for a so called “people’s vote” by the end of the week shouldn’t hold their breath. Many people point to the overwhelming support for both another referendum and for remaining in the EU among Labour’s members. But this fails take into account the interplay – or lack of it – between support for the EU and support for Corbyn.

People rarely vote on a single issue. That’s as true inside the Labour Party as it is for a general election. Support for Corbyn among the Labour membership is not linked to his position on any particular issue. As with any candidate in any kind of election, it is about what he represents to the electorate. There is a reason why pollsters ask questions like “shares my values” or “cares about people like me”. It is because voters usually can’t pin down their exact reasons for supporting someone. It’s more a feeling they have about someone, the same as when buying a house or choosing a spouse. It is less rational than emotional.

Corbyn shares the values of the majority of Labour members, and he cares about what they care about. He talks their language. Many ardent EU-supporting Corbyn fans share his critique of it. There is no will among the Labour membership at large to threaten Corbyn’s position as leader because of his views on Europe. For his supporters, retaining Corbyn as leader of Labour is more important that retaining our membership of the EU.

So, if the members aren’t inclined to exert pressure, then we need to look at what the key players in the high command might do after Tuesday’s vote. The signs there are not any better for those of us who want to find a way to reverse the outcome of the 2016 referendum.

Corbyn is a life-long eurosceptic. So is McDonnell. They are not in any way committed to finding a way to stay in the EU. McDonnell’s most recent speech and media appearances illustrate how many of the key players regard Brexit as a distraction from what they see as the real business of stopping austerity. There are some at that top table who are Remainers. But Abbott, like the membership, is too committed to the Corbyn project to upset the applecart. And Thornberry and Starmer are unlikely to act, even if minded to, when the membership would likely punish them for it. Remember that these MPs’ constituencies have thousands of members who hold their futures in their hands as reselection looms.

On top of this, many of the people around Corbyn, and perhaps the man himself, see the chaos that no deal could cause as creating the sort of revolutionary opportunity they have yearned for all their lives. For them, a break from the EU is a potential rejection of the old order and a chance to sweep away a political and economic system they regard as failing. Parliamentary democracy is a painstakingly slow way to create change – and it’s hard work. Brexit threatens a massive economic shock to the system and, therefore, in the logic of the revolutionary position, an opportunity.

In cold electoral terms, the political incentives don’t suggest a change in the Labour leadership’s attitude to a second referendum. They have carefully, diligently and very effectively sought to avoid all blame for Brexit so far. Leadership support for any position that alters that is going to be very hard to come by.

I think the best that Labour (and other) Remainers can hope for after Tuesday is that Corbyn doesn’t whip his cabinet to a line. It would mean the Starmers and Thornberrys of this world could back another EU vote without losing their jobs. In the absence of any other plan, that might help create enough momentum for another referendum. Failing that, we need to hope that a big enough cohort of parliamentarians can come together across party lines to force the government to put the brakes on no deal. And nothing that’s happened since June 2016 suggests that is going to happen.

London’s future will be shaped by London politicians. But it’s very unlikely that will end up being what Londoners voted for in 2016 – or anything like it.

Sarah Hayward is a former leader of Camden Council.

 

 

Categories: Comment
Tags: Barry Gardiner, Brexit, Conservatives, Diane Abbott, Emily Thornberry, Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, Keir Starmer, Labour, Theresa May

Labour London Assembly Member Andrew Dismore to stand down in 2020

The former MP and veteran of the "homes for votes" struggle to expose Westminster leader Dame Shirley Porter is to step aside for personal reasons
Dave Hill

Labour London Assembly Member Andrew Dismore has announced that he will not contest his seat at the 2020 election for personal reasons. “After almost 40 years in elected politics as a Labour Party councillor, MP and now Assembly Member, it feels the time is right to stand down,” he said.

Dismore, 64, became AM for the GLA constituency of Barnet & Camden in 2012, and currently serves on the Assembly’s economy, police and crime and fire committees. He was previously MP for Hendon from 1997, becoming part of the influx of MPs that formed the landslide general election victory for his party under the leadership of Tony Blair.

He retained the parliamentary seat in 2001 and during that year introduced a private members’ bill to successfully institute Holocaust Memorial Day in Britain. He held Hendon again in 2005, but at the 2010 general election he was defeated by Conservative Matthew Offord by 106 votes. He contested the seat again in 2015, but again lost to Offord, this time by a much clearer margin.

Before becoming an MP, Dismore was leader of the opposition Labour Group on Westminster Council from 1990, a role in which he attacked the Conservative administration of Dame Shirley Porter over the sensational “homes for votes” scandal, which local Labour politicians and activists exposed. He was first elected to the council in 1982.

Born in Yorkshire, Dismore later studied at the London School of Economics. He joined the Labour Party in 1974 and worked as a trade union education officer and as a solicitor.

His announcement has drawn tributes from his long-time friend and former Westminster Council colleague Karen Buck MP, who praised his “phenomenal hard work, dedication, forensic intelligence and dry humour”, and Conservative peer Daniel Finkelstein, who thanked him for his “diligent service” to the public and politics and described him as “very important to the local community”.

 

Categories: News
Tags: Andrew Dismore, Barent & Camden, Dame Shirley Porter, Daniel Finkelstein, Hendon, Karen Buck, London Assembly, London School of Economics, Matthew Offord, Tony Blair, Westminster Council

How does Shelter’s social housing vision help London?

The capital has particular problems, some of which the housing charity's national proposals address helpfully
Dave Hill

Warmly welcomed and widely publicised, Shelter’s Vision for Social Housing is a thorough and authoritative call for a new political consensus that bold state investment in homes for rent for people on low and middle incomes makes sound financial, social and national sense and for such housing to be a source of pride. It left me with two main questions on my mind. One, will it sway the unconverted? Two, does its analysis hold as firmly for the distinctive circumstances of London as for elsewhere?

There are grounds for pessimism on the first point. Shelter stresses the cross-party representation among its 16 commissioners, but the few with Conservative credentials aren’t in their party’s mainstream. The latest Tory housing minister, Kit Malthouse, is a former Westminster councillor and member of Boris Johnson’s mayoral team who never struck me as a big enthusiast for reviving the post-war Labour-Tory contest to get the most council houses built. On the other hand, the government’s recent decision to lift the borrowing cap on local authorities – something Johnson supported, at least on paper, when at the helm of City Hall – might be a sign of hope that Brexit age Conservatism will be a bit more sympathetic. Labour, of course, is pledged to build masses of social homes, but don’t bank on the party in its present state ever forming a government.

And how might Shelter’s Vision be realised in the capital? Presentationally, it has a strong London focus. It takes Grenfell as its moral benchmark, describing issues raised in the disaster’s aftermath as providing context and inspiration for the commission’s work. Three of the commissioners have Grenfell connections. They include its chair, local Methodist minister Mike Long, and Edward Daffarn, a survivor of the fire and one of the two main authors of the Grenfell Action Group blog. Another commissioner, Faiza Shaheen, is director of the trade union funded think tank CLASS and the Corbynite Labour parliamentary candidate for Chingford.

The involvement of the latter two did not inspire confidence in the report when it was published. I don’t know Daffarn, he’s had a terrible experience and I wish him no harm. But his elevation, principally by the liberal media, to the status of community sage and far-sighted prophet in the North Kensington wilderness isn’t justified by reality. Shaheen once argued that housing in the UK should be reserved for UK taxpayers, because too much of it is owned by foreigners – the sort of crude populism we expect to hear from UKIP.

Fortunately, the text of the report itself is distinguished instead by the rigour and depth that makes Shelter such an invaluable organisation. Some of its most important passages have particular relevance to the capital, where homelessness is so damagingly high and the financial challenges of increasing the supply of social rented homes are compounded by the scarcity and high cost of land to build it on. “Both historical experience in the UK and the experiences of other countries with significant social housing programmes suggest that a revolution in social housebuilding should be underpinned by measures to allow public bodies to control the price of land,” the report says (page 94).

There are also strong sections on social mix and housing regeneration, two concepts that have come to arouse suspicion, and not without good reason. As the report rightly acknowledges, some studies have questioned whether fostering “mixed communities” of itself necessarily helps those members of them who face the biggest struggles in life. There are also examples of creating “mix” appearing to provide a rather bogus pretext for ill-judged estate demolitions. Nonetheless, the report concludes that social housing stock distributed across big cities is vital to combatting the kind of internal class balkanisation London has historically avoided (page 197).

On regeneration, sometimes the focus of highly politicised opposition when proposed for estates in London with high quantities of social rented homes, it recommends that residents “have a leading voice” in such projects, including by securing their “approval and support” by means of ballots (page 151) and that no loss of social housing numbers should occur. There is no recommendation for a heavy presumption against demolition or disavowal of the use of private capital to deliver regeneration schemes.

The importance of making more land available for housing of any kind in London and the moral dilemmas and difficult politics involved in doing so were well explained in a 2016 Shelter report, produced in conjunction with development consultants Quod. It spelled out that without redeveloping estates on council-owned land, building at higher densities and re-designating some Green Belt for building on, increasing overall supply to the sorts of levels the capital needs will be extremely difficult. Within this, delivering the proportion and quantity of social rented homes, whether by councils or housing associations, would be very hard without more financial support from the state.

To bear all those things in mind is to get a bit depressed about the prospects for Shelter’s social housing vision being realised. The document is, though, a solid blueprint for a policy approach that has a lot to recommend it, not least in seeking a major attitude shift away from the denigration of social housing tenants that has become such an ugly feature of British social attitudes in recent decades. Sign Shelter’s petition here and read the vision report via here.

Categories: Analysis
Tags: Boris Johnson, Brexit, Chingford, Faiza Shaheen, Grenfell Action Group, Grenfell Tower, housing, Kit Malthouse, Shelter, social housing

Vic Keegan’s Lost London 73: Prince Albert’s mansions for the poor

One of the most important attractions of the Great Exhibition was not displayed at its main site.
Victor Keegan

You could easily fail to notice this unassuming building in Kennington Park Road near the Oval, but it has a fascinating history and is of great relevance today. 

It was completed in 1851 by order of Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, and was intended to form part of the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park as an example to the world of what a dwelling for the “labouring classes” could look like at a time  of social deprivation. This was a time when many of the workers who made the industrial revolution were living in distressed conditions, often with multiple families in one room. 

Albert had a genuine concern for the well being of the poor and this housing – a forerunner of experiments like the Peabody estates – had innovative features designed by its distinguished architect Henry Roberts. The building was divided into four flats and included such things as sound-resistant hollow bricks, which did not absorb water, and internal toilets.

But there was a problem. Although Albert was the brains behind the entire exhibition, his committee did not want the model building to be inside the gigantic Crystal Palace. They argued that a brick building would look out of place in a revolutionary iron and glass edifice which seemed to float on air. And there was a further reason: the exhibition committee felt that showcasing social distress was not, er, something they wanted to draw attention to in an exhibition heralding Britain’s industrial strengths. 

Eventually, Albert negotiated a compromise. The model dwelling was erected a just few hundred yards away from the glass extravaganza. It was to be of the Exhibition, but not in it. Despite this status as a sort of changeling child, it attracted over 250,000 visitors, including the queen, Charles Dickens and many from overseas. Roberts’s designs gave philanthropic housing a big boost, and influenced social housing in Britain, on the continent and  even in America. 

When the Great Exhibition had finished, the main structure was famously transported to Sydenham, where it remained until it was destroyed by a fire in 1854. Meanwhile, Albert’s model dwelling was dismantled brick by brick and rebuilt a few miles away in Kennington Park Road. It is the only edifice from the Great Exhibition that has survived to this day. 

Albert’s house stands on the edge of Kennington Common, where thousands of Chartists gathered  in 1848 before presenting a petition to parliament demanding basic rights. The authorities feared violence and brought in tens of thousands of police and army personnel to quell a riot that never happened.

What did happen was that most of the Chartists’s demands – secret ballots, payment for MPs, equal constituencies and manhood (not yet womanhood) suffrage – have been achieved. But the problem of providing affordable homes for the London poor is still a big, unsolved one. Prince Albert would not be amused. Meanwhile, this model dwelling, currently occupied by Trees for Cities, stands as a true Albert Memorial of which the Chartists would surely have approved. For a detailed analysis, see this paper by Barbara Leckie.

All previous instalments of Vic Keegan’s Lost London are archived here.

Categories: Culture, Lost London
Tags: Kennington Common, Kennington Park Road

Dave Hill: It’s too easy to blame London’s housing problems on ‘the rich’

Reductive populism does not help us answer the big questions.
Dave Hill

On Sunday, BBC 1’s The Big Questions asked: Is London only for the rich? I was invited to take part in show, but declined as I had other things to do. Watching it since on iPlayer, I can’t decide if I regret that or am relieved. On the one hand, the debate lacked elements I like to think I could have added. On the other, I fear the set of tendentious clichés it promoted might have made me incoherent with frustration and despair.

“It’s a very divided city, London, most people would agree that without contention,” declared presenter Nicky Campbell. Would they? Would they be right? He invoked, “The two nations that we are living in in London,” not as a point of view, but as a fact. “Let’s talk about the empty properties all over London,” he suggested. Would that be the quantity of long-term vacant dwellings that has halved in size in the last ten years, according to the government’s figures?

Before we knew it we were on to Grenfell, ushered on stage to once more perform its customary, miscast role as damning metaphor for the city’s inequality. Anna Minton, the London academic who does much to legitimise dubious grand narratives about “social cleansing” and the “neo-liberal city”, repeated the mantra that warnings about safety were ignored, never mind that nowhere in the Grenfell Action Group’s extensive online library of claims and accusations have I found any mention of the tower’s cladding, let alone that it was a fire risk.

At one point, a woman called Sophie mentioned research for Sadiq Khan by the cream of the LSE’s housing experts which found that overseas investors have made little difference to London house price inflation, that without their money there would even fewer social and other “affordable” homes built, and that “buy to leave” barely exists. She also raised the question of building on Green Belt land. Minton sharply dismissed her. Such notions must not contaminate her thesis.

It’s hard to know where to start, but perhaps The Big Questions’ question will suffice. Is London only for the rich? The answer partly depends on what is meant by “for”. Most Londoners do not fit into that category, yet nearly nine million of us live here and the capital’s poverty rate is higher than that of the rest of the country. Is London expensive, especially for accommodation? Answer, yes. Too expensive for too many people? Yes, again. But is that all the fault of “the rich”? Claiming so is far too glib.

Historical perspective helps us here. London has always been expensive, including in the four decades after the war, when its skilled working-class migrated to New Towns, its population plunged and its economy declined. It has long struggled with a mismatch between housing demand and housing supply – yes, there was homelessness even in the years of large-scale social housing construction.

The story began to change in the second half of the 1980s, when a booming financial sector fuelled economic and population growth. Later, London’s schools, public transport and crime rates improved, all adding to its attractions, both domestic and international. Make a place nicer, and more people want to live and work there and invest money there. They need homes and they need buildings in which to run businesses and be employed. More demand for property tends to push up the price of it and also strengthens arguments for redevelopment, such that more and (ideally) more useful buildings replace some of the old.

Wealth is undoubtedly part of this picture: the wealth of the City, which also helped bankroll the social investment policies of the last Labour governments, including those improvements in London’s public transport and state schools; the wealth of London middle-class professionals – including its indignant Corbynites – who have migrated into areas once thought undesirable, gentrifying as they go with a variety of effects.

These are things that have happened because London has become more populous and more appealing. What has not happened is a national policy response to enable London government to regulate and mitigate the undesirable outcomes of this, such the powers and cash required to bring about the building of sufficient housing affordable to people on low and middle incomes and to better reconcile the often competing benefits of continuity and change.

Another impediment is Nimbyism, a political cause which Hard Left and Conservationist Right frequently share. We find the former fervently objecting to new housing supply and demanding the preservation of damp and dilapidated social homes, even when its tenants wish for better. We find them demonising wealthy foreigners. Is that “progressive”?

Remedies exist, but they are not easy to sell. On The Big Questions, an angry London restauranteur called for a reform of Council Tax bands, so that owners of high value properties in London pay far more than they do now. Good idea. But would the London electorate agree? Ed Miliband’s proposed “mansion tax” was a sort of super council tax band. It made even some Labour MPs nervous, most notably core Corbynite Diane Abbott.

The very premise of the view that “London is only for the rich” is flawed, and those who foster it use flawed arguments. And yet it has become a widespread received wisdom, a hegemonic howl, a “common sense” of our time that is reductive, misleading and often reactionary. It is a feelgood, populist fable that people like to tell themselves, and its proponents in the media and academia have gone unchallenged for far too long. Maybe the next time I’m asked to talk about it on TV I’d better turn up and try to remain calm.

 

Categories: Comment
Tags: Anna Minton, Council Tax, Diane Abbott, Ed Miliband, Grenfell Action Group, Grenfell Tower, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour, London School of Economics, Nicky Campbell, Sadiq Khan