Leaders right to call on government to reset relationship with London
Londoners are not typically known for their patience, but in truth the leaders of this city have shown a remarkable ability in recent years to bite their tongue amid unprecedented attacks on the capital.
That patience appears finally to have worn thin, at least judging from last night’s speeches at the Mansion House from both the Lord Mayor and the Mayor of London. Both voiced their frustration at the way in which central government has treated the capital in recent years.
Sadiq Khan has every reason to be irritated, as Transport for London is forced into an endless cycle of bailout negotiations rather than receiving a long-term funding deal. The upshot of that could well be the managed decline of the service, hardly befitting a global city. Canada’s leadership, for its part, is rightly not thrilled by the lack of attention that financial services received in the negotiations of our departure from the European Union. Benign neglect may in fact be too polite a term. At some points, as the Lord Mayor said last night, it has felt as if London has become a dirty word.
That is, evidently, self-defeating. The capital doesn’t need government support but it does need government to give it the tools it needs to continue being the driver of the entire country’s economy. The idea that any kind of private sector ‘levelling up’ can occur without the capital’s capital is for the birds.
In the longer-term, the capital should be given far more control over the tax revenues produced here, to levels similar to that of other major global cities across the world. But in the short and medium-term government can simply work with the leadership of both the city and the City rather than against them.
In a global race (remember that?) London is competing with fast-moving, dynamic cities like Singapore and Los Angeles.
There is no question that the talent and drive is here; the question is whether central government shares the ambition.