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Grenfell Truths: the outstanding community of the Kensington Aldridge Academy

Dave Hill

From the cold ashes of Grenfell, some heart-warming news. The Kensington Aldridge Academy (KAA), a secondary school which opened right next to Grenfell Tower in 2014, has been graded “outstanding” by Ofsted inspectors and named secondary school of the year by the Times Educational Supplement (TES). It has also won a TES special services to education award for sustaining its important community role amid what the judges called “the most tragic and extraordinary of circumstances”.

The fire meant that the school’s students were relocated from its original building, not just once but twice in the space of four months. Four KAA pupils and one former pupil perished in the blaze and nearly 60 have had to be rehoused because of it. Exams were sat and lessons initially held at other schools while new temporary school buildings were constructed on an alternative site at remarkable speed.

Throughout all of this, the founding spirit of KAA appears to have survived and even thrived. “It’s one of the most amazing schools I’ve ever been in,” one of the children says. Its principal, David Benson, says the school drew strongly on its principles of “Citizenship, resilience and pulling together”.

This stirring and beautiful story has unfolded quietly against a backdrop of unbearable horror, loss and pain and, to my mind, serves as a valuable reminder that, as in any London neighbourhood, most of the activity that builds a sense of common purpose, of the possibility of individual progress and of mutual support goes on largely unnoticed by the wider world, and also by some of those who most vocally proclaim themselves representatives of the views and wishes of local people.

This is not the place to explore the point at length but, given the uncritical veneration some major media organisations have heaped on it since the fire, it seems relevant to point out that the Grenfell Action Group was founded in 2010 to prevent the Kensington Aldridge Academy being built. Indeed, the handful of agitators who comprise the group argued during what they termed their “resistance” to it that the school and its adjoining leisure centre would “completely alienate the resident community” and “primarily serve the interests and needs of the users of these institutions, to the exclusion and great detriment of the local community”.

In his brave and eloquent investigation of the fire and its aftermath for the London Review of Books, Andrew O’Hagan detected within North Kensington activist circles a hatred and suspicion of Kensington and Chelsea Council so intense that it made it impossible for some to regard anything the council ever did or proposed in their part of the borough as anything other than venal or corrupt. Large and somewhat debatable claims have been made for the predictive powers of the Grenfell Action Group. Maybe some of their concerns about tower’s refurbishment will turn out to have been be justified. But were they right about the Kensington Aldridge Academy?

Categories: Comment
Tags: Andrew O'Hagan, education, Grenfell Action Group, Grenfell Tower, Kensington & Chelsea, Kensington Aldridge Academy, London Review of Books, Ofsted, Times Educational Supplement

Vic Keegan’s Lost London 47: Bedlam’s progress

Victor Keegan

Many years ago I worked in the City office of the Guardian newspaper in Salisbury House, between London Wall and the lovely garden of Finsbury Circus. I had no idea until decades later, when I looked at an old map, (see below) that it was the office was the site of the second Bedlam lunatic asylum.

A monumental building, which included parts of the original London Wall, it was designed by that amazing polymath Robert Hooke, whose only sin was to have been a contemporary of Christopher Wren and Isaac Newton, who outsmarted him in fame though not in talent. 

The original Bedlam (or Bethlehem) Hospital, built in 1247, was around the corner in Bishopsgate where Liverpool Street Station is now located. It had gained a terrible reputation because of appalling living conditions and a dreadful practice whereby members of the public paid to see the inmates suffering. 

It was, however, the first institution of its kind in Britain – and possibly anywhere else – so it was at the start of a long learning curve. The management sought “people of quality” to visit as well as “the lower orders” in a kind of primitive business plan to generate compassion and increase donations. 

In the eighteenth century, according to some estimates, anything up to 90,000 Londoners a year paid a penny to visit the asylum and watch the antics of the inmates, who were often chained to a wall in their cells, as depicted by William Hogarth in A Rake’s Progress, in which the louche son of a rich merchant ends up in Bedlam. The satirist Jonathan Swift suggested that “as all the politicians were mad, they should recruit for Parliament from inside”.

Bedlam was moved to St Georges Fields in Southwark where it lasted until 1930 in  a building that was taken over a few years later in 1936 by the Imperial War Museum, which is still there.  Today, Bedlam exists in its fourth home as the Bethlem Royal Hospital and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust in Bromley, where it is a world leader in the treatment of mental illness.

Read previous instalments of Vic Keegan’s Lost London here.

Categories: Culture, Lost London
Tags: Bedlam, Finsbury Circus, Liverpool Street, London Wall, William Hogarth

Grenfell Truths: If the London Fire Brigade was at fault, we need to know

Dave Hill

You would need a soul of ice not to feel sympathy for Michael Dowden, the London firefighter who, as watch manager, led the initial response to the Grenfell Tower fire that killed 72 people and has scarred the lives of many more, including his. Dowden’s two days under question at the inquiry into why that dreadful event occurred and how it was responded to have plainly been a huge ordeal for him.

He has been obliged to publicly account for his actions on the night and at one stage was reduced to tears. Questioned by a high-powered lawyer with reporters looking on, he has told the inquiry that in the hour when he was in charge, he was “out of his comfort zone”, unaware of London Fire Brigade (LFB) guidance about the flammability of building cladding products, not trained to make decisions about when the “stay put” policy should be abandoned, and failed to follow national guidance when carrying out safety checks on the tower in 2016, resulting in cladding, sprinklers, radio blackspots and escape routes going unchecked.

The inquiry is not a court of law, Michael Dowden is not on trial and the inquiry is a long way from reaching any conclusions about what occurred, including the conduct of individuals. However, Dowden’s evidence to the inquiry has put an unforgiving spotlight on the preparedness of the capital’s fire service for dealing with a blaze like Grenfell and its role in assessing the building’s fire safety provision before it happened.

I doubt I am the only Londoner who feels uncomfortable about this. We rightly revere the bravery of the city’s firefighters, and no one can possibly doubt that plenty of it was demanded of those who went in to the inferno on that terrible night, intent on saving lives. Perhaps, too, there is unwillingness among us to accept that fault might legitimately be found within the LFB, an organisation whose members we want to feel we can rely on and who can be required to take risks with their own safety that most of us would flinch from.

But such sentiments can be very far from helpful when facts need to be established and faced. It is the inquiry’s job to establish the facts of Grenfell – to, in its own words, “examine the circumstances leading up to and surrounding the fire“. It is the responsibility of all who were party to those circumstances to acknowledge the facts that emerge, including those provided by their own members that might be troubling. The impulse behind the London Fire Brigade Union launching a social media campaign in support of their comrade is not hard to understand, but neither is it appropriate.

There has been far too much rushing to judgement about Grenfell – too much anointing of saints, too much partisan apportioning of blame. Large media bodies and even, astonishingly, members of parliament have been in the forefront of this, in some cases even before the flames were quelled.

Seventy-two people were killed by the Grenfell Tower fire, an avoidable calamity that must never be repeated in London or anywhere else. The inquiry’s job is to find out why it happened, why those people died and why so many others have been damaged by it in different ways, including Michael Dowden. If it emerges that the London Fire Brigade as an institution, some members of it or both were at fault, then Londoners need to know it and the brigade had better deal with it.

The Grenfell Inquiry continues its work today.

Categories: Comment
Tags: Grenfell Action Group, Grenfell Inquiry, Grenfell Tower, London Fire Brigade, Michael Dowden

Southwark councillor demands public apology from Haringey cabinet member for ‘lying’ about estate regeneration plans

Dave Hill

The credibility of the new and very different Labour administration running Haringey since the 3 May elections depends on its demonstrating a high degree of competence, both in the eyes of local residents and of fellow Labour politicians across the city. Achieving this has not become any easier thanks to remarks made by a prominent member of the council’s new cabinet that have caused two Labour councillors in Southwark to accuse him of telling lies.

Noah Tucker, Haringey’s recently appointed cabinet member for corporate services and insourcing, said at a meeting of Haringey cabinet last night that he believed “Southwark are intending to replace their council blocks by regenerated private blocks” and contrasted this with what he said will be Haringey’s approach to replacing any of its council dwellings that might be demolished by “one-for-one council accommodation”.

Tucker’s comments, which were made at a meeting of the Haringey cabinet last night, were described on Twitter as “A lie. Pure and simple” by Southwark’s leader Peter John while its cabinet member for housing management and modernisation, Stephanie Cryan, described Tucker’s words as “A complete disregard of protocol not to mention a statement that has no bearing on the truth”.

Cryan has now written to Tucker, who she is due to see at a meeting tomorrow, demanding to know “why you felt the need to quite frankly lie in public” about Southwark’s approach, saying that it is “absolutely not the case” that Southwark intends to replace tower blocks on the Ledbury estate in Peckham with private blocks and that it is a matter of public record that the borough’s preferred option is to “strengthen and refurbish” the existing Ledbury housing.

The intervention by Tucker was filmed and put online by the Ledbury Action Group, which describes its aim as supporting Ledbury estate residents and facilitating their involvement in the council’s consultation of them, and brought to Cryan’s attention. She has asked Tucker to “make a public apology and retract your comments before any more damage is caused”. Her email has been copied to Haringey leader Joseph Ejiofor.

Tucker’s comparison with Southwark was made during a discussion about Haringey’s “preferred option” of demolishing two housing blocks on its Broadwater Farm estate in Tottenham due to urgent safety concerns. A deputation led by Broadwater Farm residents association secretary Jacob Secker had raised a number of concerns about the choice and type of temporary housing those living in the blocks would be entitled to, their “right of return” to the estate and how their wishes for its future would be ascertained and acted on.

A lobby of the cabinet meeting was supported by the Ledbury group and by Stop HDV, a Haringey pressure group comprising members of Momentum and parties other than Labour which played a leading role in a successful campaign to get rid of councillors who had supported plans by Haringey’s previous Labour administration to form a joint venture company with international regeneration specialists Lendlease in order to redevelop a range of council property, including the civic centre, council offices and housing estates. Broadwater Farm had been earmarked for redevelopment some time in the future.

Secker demanded that residents should be balloted over whether the blocks should be left standing and strengthened or knocked down and replaced. and that their wishes should be acted on. He also sought guarantees that when they return to the estate their rents will be “exactly” the same and insisted that temporary accommodation should not included hotels or bed and breakfast establishment, saying “it’s not going to happen”.

A council officer told the meeting that in anticipation of the residents having to move out at short notice, around 84 council dwellings elsewhere had been set aside for the 89 households living in one of the two blocks.

Requesting that “two properly costed options” be provided prior to any consultation, Secker also asked “Where is the funding to provide this public housing?”

The new Labour group elected on 3 May, which is led by Momentum members, ran on a manifesto which said “we do not believe that the HDV [Haringey Development Vehicle joint venture] provides the answer” to delivering “new, decent, genuinely affordable housing” in the borough and that “we do not intend to progress with it”. The manifesto promised to “deliver at least a thousand new council homes at council rents by 2022” by other means. The current waiting list for council housing in Haringey stands at around 9,000 households.

A report for the cabinet found that the two blocks could be made safe at a total estimated cost of £33.6m, which have to be met entirely from council funds, and that rebuilding them could cost between £32 and £54, though this option would produce better quality homes and probably be eligible for external grant funding, lessening the cost to the council. London Mayor Sadiq Khan has recently allocated £4m to Haringey to help finance it building homes at London Affordable Rent levels, which can be close to conventional council rent levels. Some of this could be used towards replacing the two Broadwater Farm blocks.

Emine Ibrahim, Haringey’s deputy leader and its cabinet member for housing and estate renewal, whose responsibilities include Broadwater Farm resident engagement, promised to go through a number of issues Secker and his colleagues had raised and said she was “looking into the legal side” of holding a ballot of residents. In her response to the report on the blocks she wrote that the council has “a duty to maintain the long-term health of the council’s finances”.

Ibrahim is a national vice chair of Momentum and Haringey’s leader Joseph Ejiofor sits on its national co-ordinating body. Noah Tucker became a councillor at a by-election in October 2016. He and his brother Calvin Tucker previously ran a Far Left website called 21st Century Socialism, which they have now taken down. Tucker’s sister, Pilgrim Tucker, is a housing campaigner who has been prominent in activism related to the Grenfell fire.

Categories: News
Tags: council housing, Emine Ibrahim, Haringey, housing, Joseph Ejiofor, Labour, Noah Tucker, regeneration, social housing, Southwark, Stephanie Cryan

London Festival of Architecture: ULC Bartlett student show

Dave Hill

The June-long London Festival of Architecture is now into its final week and since Saturday has included the Bartlett School of Architecture Summer Show at 22 Gordon Street, WC1.

A philistine in the philosophy of spatial and building design, I must confess to finding much of what was on display quite baffling. It’s clear I have a lot to learn. Even so, I was impressed by the range and volume of the work, and my London eye was quickly drawn to a Year 1 project called Inhabiting Spitalfields and a paper installation it produced. See main picture above.

What was the project about? Well, here’s an excerpt from its accompanying explanatory text:

The historic neighbourhood of Spitalfields in East London, famous for its weavers’ garrets and markets, was both the site for the building design project and the inspiration for the installation project. Spitalfields has been home to waves of immigrants from Europe and beyond who have enriched the character of the area with their skills and cultures. For ‘City In A Room’ we worked in nine groups, each designing and making an installation inspired by the life of a displaced character from the history of Spitalfields.

Here’s a close up of part of the work.

 Why not take a look for yourself? The show runs until 7 July.

Categories: Culture
Tags: Bartlett School of Architecture, London Festival of Architecture, Spitalfields, University College London

London Labour: Corbynites collide in contest to eject Iain Duncan Smith from Chingford

Dave Hill

If Conservatives in their totemic parliamentary seat of Chingford and Woodford Green have been fretting about the erosion of Iain Duncan Smith’s majority to less than 2,500 votes, they might be heartened by indications that his Labour challenger at the next general election will be the Full Jeremy – not, perhaps, the sort of politician likely to persuade disenchanted Tory voters to change sides in an Outer London constituency which, despite demographic change, has yet to entirely dispense with the values of Essex Man.

Labour List’s coverage of the local candidate selection process has focussed on two hopefuls firmly on the party’s Corbyn Left: Waltham Forest branch chair and former National Union of Journalists organiser Jenny Lennox, and Faiza Shaheen, who is director of the union-funded think tank CLASS.

Shaheen seems to have got off to a fast start, winning the backing of Momentum and unions Unite, Aslef, TSSA and BFAWU. She has a higher public profile than Lennox, appearing often on television, including to argue that housing built in the UK should be reserved for UK taxpayers because too much of it is owned by foreigners. “With a limited supply of housing there is less to go round for the rest of us,” she said, perhaps unaware of research done for Sadiq Khan, which found that without overseas finance London’s housing shortages would be even greater than they are already – or of how much she sounds like Nigel Farage.

Shaheen’s biography lists a degree from Oxford in Philosophy, Politics and Economics and she is represented by the prestigious talent agency Curtis Brown. Her name was second on a list of signatories of a letter published by the Guardian on the first anniversary of Grenfell, a list that serves as a roll call of the familiar “social cleansing” populists who have the run of the liberal media these days.

Her supporters include the garrulous Guardian columnist Owen Jones and Lisa Mckenzie, a London School of Economics research fellow (and Guardian contributor) who in tweeting her congratulations to Shaheen mentioned that she stood in Chingford & Woodford Green for Class War in 2015. Among detractors Shaheen is described as “a cold fish on the doorstep”. It is believed by some local members that she has been a party member for about one year. Shaheen herself has yet to answer my emails asking if that is correct.

If Lennox, a Momentumite like Shaheen, is to prevail in this clash of Corbynites, she will probably owe a lot to shadow chancellor John McDonnell, who has endorsed her.

Judging by her Twitter profile picture (below), Lennox also enjoys the backing of prominent members of the “Corbyn Council” now running Waltham Forest’s borough neighbour Haringey. I might be mistaken, but the man with the red rosette looks a lot like Noah Tucker, formerly the administrator of the Far Left website 21st Century Socialism, and the woman to his left closely resembles Haringey cabinet member Peray Ahmet, who survived as a councillor after changing sides over the previous Haringey administration’s contentious Haringey Development Vehicle plan. It is an under-reported fact that Labour lost more seats in Haringey on 3 May than in any other London borough. True, the party’s overall vote share rose, but in the marginal wards in the west of Haringey its candidates were wiped out by the Liberal Democrats.

Naturally, Lennox is making the most of her connections with Labour’s national top brass, using Twitter to praise Corbyn’s recent activities in Syria and elsewhere and using a photo of herself attending the recent Labour Live event in Tottenham to accompany her candidacy announcement.

Is it possible that the Corbyn vote will be so split that a different sort of Labour candidate will come through the gap and win? There isn’t much talk of that, even though two other contenders, Yemisi Osho and Sally Littlejohn, are councillors and as such have experience of frontline politics that neither Shaheen nor Lennox have acquired. Furthermore, the local constituency party organisation has a strong Corbynite presence, as personified by its chair Gary Lefley.

Labour has grounds for optimism about unseating Duncan Smith – as well as his majority shrinking last year, the party gained council seats and vote share in the constituency in May’s borough elections. Local members’ judgement about the best sort of candidate to capture what was once a Thatcherite stronghold will be exercised on 15 July.

Categories: News
Tags: Chingford, Conservatives, Faiza Shaheen, Iain Duncan Smith, Jenny Lennox, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour, Lisa Mckenzie, London School of Economics, Sadiq Khan, Waltham Forest, Woodford

Haringey: housing activists to lobby ‘Corbyn council’ over Broadwater Farm demolition plans

Dave Hill

Housing campaigners who brought about the recent election of a Labour council in Haringey led by members of the Corbynite Momentum pressure group has announced that it will lobby the first meeting of the new council’s cabinet over its proposed demolition of council-owned housing due to safety concerns.

Stop HDV, itself a Momentum-led organisation, has said that the tenants and residents association of the Broadwater Farm estate in Tottenham, along with residents of two of its residential blocks, are “calling for support for a lobby of the cabinet meeting to raise their concerns about this proposal”.

The cabinet, which meets on Tuesday evening, is to consider a 70-page report (pages 31-104) which describes the demolition and replacement of the two blocks as its “preferred option” after survey work commissioned by the previous Labour administration discovered structural problems in a number blocks which make them vulnerable to gas explosions.

The report recommends that residents of the estate’s Tangmere and Northolt blocks, which were found to be at particular risk, are temporarily rehoused immediately and piped gas removed from the buildings by October.

It says the two blocks could be strengthened at a total estimated cost of £33.6m, which would have to be met entirely from existing council funds, and that although replacing them might cost between £32m and £54m, some of this would be likely to be covered by external grant funding and would “represent an investment in high quality new homes with a longer life and lower maintenance costs”.

The council’s deputy leader Emine Ibrahim, a national Momentum vice chair, confirms in the report that demolishing the blocks would result in “the best long term outcomes for our tenants”, describing the cost of strengthening them as “very high indeed” and saying that this course “would not offer our residents the decent council homes we are committed to ensuring all our tenants live in.” (page 31, paragraph 2.2).

Ibrahim, whose cabinet responsibilities include Broadwater Farm resident engagement, stresses that the views of residents will be taken fully into account before making any final decision, but does not promise to ballot them. Balloting is listed as an issue by Stop HDV and it has been reported that residents association secretary Jacob Secker has accused the new council of “treating residents of these two blocks in a callous and incompetent manner” as if they were “second class citizens”. Secker believes residents should be given more choice about where they are moved to.

Last autumn’s Labour Party conference passed a motion calling for mandatory ballots of estate residents before regeneration programmes go ahead, a stance endorsed by party leader Jeremy Corbyn in his conference speech. Subsequently, London Mayor Sadiq Khan added the requirement to his “best practice guide to estate regeneration”, which had previously argued against it.

Ibrahim warns that “as a council we also have a duty to maintain the long-term health of the council’s finances and to consider the direct impact such a cost would have on our ability both to maintain the rest of our existing homes, many of which are in desperate need of investment.” (page 33, paragraph 2.3).

The Stop HDV campaign mobilised Labour Party members in Haringey against the previous administration’s plan to form a 50/50 joint venture company, to be called the Haringey Development Vehicle (HDV), with international property developer Lendlease, which specialises in collaborations with government bodies on major regeneration schemes.

The council argued that the HDV would bring forward  finance and expertise it could not provide itself to enable the redevelopment of its own civic centre and nearby offices in Wood Green as well as improving its housing stock and overall housing supply. Broadwater Farm was earmarked for potential demolition in the future.

The handling of the Broadwater Farm safety issue, designated a “key decision” by the council report, is seen as a major early test for what one local activist termed the nation’s first “Corbyn Council” as tensions between preserving existing council housing, providing new low cost homes and finding the necessary finance demand difficult decisions.

The pressure being put on the council by Stop HDV, which has been supported by local Liberal Democrats, Green Party AM Siân Berry, various extra-parliamentary left wing groups and the Guardian, is also directed at its new leader Joseph Ejiofor, who is a member of Momentum’s national co-ordinating body but has been been criticised by Stop HDV for being “spotty” in his opposition to the Lendlease joint venture plan. The cabinet is due to discuss the HDV at a meeting on 17 July.

Footnote for googlers: Emine Ibrahim sometimes spells her forename “Emina“.

Categories: News
Tags: Broadwater Farm, council housing, Emine Ibrahim, Haringey, Jacob Secker, Jeremy Corbyn, Joseph Ejiofor, Labour, Lendlease, Liberal Democrats, Momentum, Sadiq Khan, Sian Berry, social housing, Tottenham

Brexit or no Brexit, the nation needs London to remain strong

Dave Hill

Yesterday’s march to Parliament Square for a “people’s vote” on the government’s Brexit deal, whenever and if ever it is struck, had the national focus you would expect. Not only was it held in the heart of the nation’s capital, ending next to the home of national government, it also invoked themes of national history and destiny to make its case: prominent among the marchers as they gathered in Pall Mall were a wheelchair-bound armed forces veteran and teenagers demanding a better future; UK union flags were dotted among European Union ones; the Cenotaph and Churchill’s statue were claimed as photo opportunity props.

The marchers themselves came from various parts of Britain: Wales, Scotland and the England beyond the capital. That, of course, is what the cause requires – its effectiveness depends on mobilising citizens from coast to coast. Given the quicksands of today’s political terrain, who knows if it will succeed or what the true impacts of leaving the EU might be? There is, though, one sure thing amid all the uncertainty – Brexit or no Brexit, Britain needs London to remain strong.

Let’s contemplate the daunting details, displeasing to some though they might be. Greater London produces nearly a quarter of the UK’s total wealth and generates 30% of its taxes. Its productivity dwarfs that of any other UK city, its growth creates employment far beyond its own boundaries and it exports the equivalent of £2,500 per Londoner in taxes every year to other parts of the UK. How London would cope with Brexit is a matter of diffuse opinion, but whatever Britain’s relationships with its European neighbours two, five or 20 years from now, its dependence on its capital seems unlikely to lessen any time soon.

Part of the depressing and opaque condition of national politics just now is that so little attention is being given to how best to nurture London’s nationally invaluable strengths and help it to address its local weaknesses. Instead, both the Conservative government and the Labour opposition have seen advantage in being perceived as ambivalent if not unsympathetic towards London, largely in the subliminal sense of disapproving of the elitism and over-mightiness with which it is associated in non-Londoners’ minds.

The EU referendum outcome formed a big part of the backdrop to this. The Brexit vote, after all, can plausibly be read as a rebuke to Remain City and all it is seen to stand for. Given that both Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn – a London MP, of course – need to keep Leave voters sweet, they have little to gain from speaking up for London when doing so would be read as a form of favouritism that both leaders prefer to be seen to abjure.

Where does all that leave Sadiq Khan in his role as number one London champion and its most prominent Remainer during the referendum campaign? Last autumn, the Mayor said he thought a second referendum might prove necessary, and at the start of this year he published a report by Cambridge Econometrics warning that a “no deal hard Brexit” would be bad for employment and growth.

But though in Central London yesterday, the Mayor was there to address the Eid celebration in Trafalgar Square rather than to join the march that filed past it at lunchtime. To the vocal annoyance of the demonstrators, Corbyn, a career-long Brexiter, doesn’t back a “people’s vote”. Even if, privately, the Mayor favours the idea, these days he is rarely out of step with his party leader in public. Tottenham MP David Lammy and Twickenham MP Vince Cable were the London politicians who called for a people’s vote from the Parliament Square stage. Along with London’s local authorities, Mayor Khan has continued to prise a few more devolution concessions from the centre. But maybe the politics of Brexit and their entanglement with the politics of Labour – not least in London itself – are inhibiting the city’s political leader too.

Wherever you stand on Brexit – and it should not be forgotten that a substantial minority of 40% of Londoners favoured it – the political torpor it has induced must not shut down arguments for helping London to thrive in the future. In or out of the EU, Britain will continue to heavily depend on its capital city.

Will Brexit be good or bad for London? On London and the London Society are holding a debate on the issue on 13 September. Buy your tickets here.

 

 

 

 

Categories: Comment
Tags: Brexit, Conservatives, David Lammy, Gina Miller, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour, Pall Mall, Parliament Square, Sadiq Khan, The London Society, Trafalgar Square