London is an exceptional city. Anyone who lives or works here knows this, but its exceptionalism has been turned against it in recent years. Far-Right activists have sought to paint the capital as a hostile and misgoverned hell-hole and UK pundits such as Paul Collier and David Goodhart single London out as both the cause […]
On the evening of 10 October, 2023, I boarded an eastbound London Overground train at Stratford station. I found myself sitting next to an Orthodox Jewish woman. Opposite sat her two Orthodox Jewish woman companions. There were a few minutes to go before the train’s departure time. As the carriage filled up, the women chatted […]
I first visited the Seven Sisters market in January 2009, noting its value and its charm. An improvised, warren-like affair within the dilapidated former Wards furniture shop by Seven Sisters station, it had a defining Latin American, particularly Colombian, flavour and offered everything from hairdressing to clothing to property services to, most of all, food: […]
The government’s plans for a 21,000-home New Town in Enfield, first reported by On London last month, will “not be possible” without significant investment in public transport and other infrastructure alongside a City Hall takeover of suburban rail serving the area, Sir Sadiq Khan told the London Assembly last week. The Enfield site, one of […]
For some months, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, has faced criticism and legal pressure for facilitating housing schemes in his area that are all “luxury” and no “affordable” – the sort of thing his counterpart in London, Sir Sadiq Khan, has rules against. Burnham’s administration has been loaning many millions of pounds to […]
This year’s local elections mostly bypassed London. They took place mainly in the shire counties of England, as the capital took a year off between the Mayor and Assembly races of 2024 and next year’s full round of borough contests. But two by-elections to fill vacancies on borough councils took place yesterday, one in one […]
Amid the gloom about high streets, a new analysis from the London Assembly economy committee strikes a welcome optimistic note, underlined by committee chair Marina Ahmad as she launched the report this week: “Don’t believe this nonsense about the high streets dying,” she said. “They are not.” If high streets are not dying, they are […]
There were two London borough by-elections last Thursday, 10 April. They produced two bad results for Labour and two convincing victories for rival parties of the centre or left. The more dramatic came in Haringey, where the Green Party gained the St Ann’s ward. But a Liberal Democrat hold in Sutton Central had its own […]
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