May 10, 2007
The city that the Blair era changed - for ever
Published in the Evening Standard
This is the day the country begins its farewell to Tony Blair. It's a moment for the nation he has governed for a decade to pause and take stock. Many are debating how the outgoing prime minister has changed Britain. But what of the city where he has spent his political career, the city where he will continue to live once he’s left office? What did Blair do for London?
He's certainly left his mark on the landscape. His enemies will point to the Millennium Dome, seeing it as a permanent memorial to the Blair knack - later demonstrated more seriously in Iraq - for visionary rhetoric married to poor judgement, bad planning and financial profligacy. His admirers, on the other hand, will regard the post of London Mayor as Blair's greatest bequest to the capital, at last restoring the strategic city-wide authority that had been stolen in 1986.
But Blair's imprint goes deeper than a mere building or political institution. For London became a kind of showcase of Blairism, the place which more than any other demonstrates what, for good or ill, our departing prime minister was all about.
Just look around you. This city sparkles now in a way it did not 15 years ago. You can see it in the cranes sprouting like vegetation, sprucing up derelict and tired neighbourhoods, and constantly building, building, building. Disused warehouses becoming loft apartments; empty factories converted into chic eateries. Once shabby streets have smartened up; there are now pavement cafes and well-appointed restaurants of the kind you always used to find in foreign capitals, but only rarely here. These days our city looks more and more like the Richard Curtis version of London.
There's a simple explanation for that. The London of the Blair years has been rolling in money. Whether it's City bankers racking up bonuses or Russian exiles sheltering their fortunes, this last decade has seen the cash gush in. A city that was once in structural decline can now show off more money than at any time in living memory. Even the mayor of New York frets out loud that his city is losing its place as the financial capital of the world - to us.
Only the most hardened Labour supporter would award credit for all that to the government. But Blair has certainly not stood in the way. His most loyal lieutenant, Peter Mandelson, seemed to speak for his master when he famously quipped that Labour was "completely relaxed about people becoming filthy rich." In London, we've see the proof that Mandelson was speaking the clear truth.
Labour has let stand tax rules for so-called 'non-domiciles' allowing London to become a tax haven for foreign millionaires. The effect has been felt rapidly, from the high-end boutiques where Russian is a second language to the mansions in Kensington and Chelsea snapped up for eight-figures sums, bought by those for whom London has become the ideal landing pad for the super-rich.
It's not all about foreigners. The City boys have been allowed their head too, pulling in telephone number bonuses while hedge fund managers earn sums to make the eyes water. Blair has smiled on it all, the days when a Labour chancellor could promise to squeeze the rich until the pips squeaked a distant memory.
Blair's approach, and that of Gordon Brown, has been to step aside and allow London's wealth creation machine to work its magic. The LSE’s Tony Travers says it's no wonder the City has shelved its traditional suspicions of Labour: “It’s been left alone – and that’s all it ever wanted.”
And Blair has extended that attitude to London and the entire south east region. Labour ministers used to worry about the gap between the wealth of the capital and the rest of the country. Under Harold Wilson, George Brown pressured industries to relocate to poorer parts of the country, especially the north of England. Gordon Brown has done the odd bit of civil service relocation; otherwise, he has let economic nature take its course. The government has treated London and the south east as a golden goose: as long as the eggs keep coming, it's happy to let the goose do what it wants.
Even when that means people being left behind, both inside and outside the city. Inside, there are still the stubborn pockets of poverty, the estates filled with workless families that mean some London boroughs still rank among the poorest places in Europe.
Outside, it's meant the growing sense that London is pulling away from the rest of the country. There is now an entirely distinct London economy, with a private sector that is, proportionally, nearly twice the size of that which operates everywhere else. London house prices are in their own stratosphere.
The people of London are increasingly different from those of the rest of the country too. On some estimates, close to 40% of today's Londoners were born outside Britain (and the figure is rising). The Blair era has accelerated that change. Thanks to the enlargement of the European Union, and Blair’s decision to allow workers from the EU’s newest members to come here straight away, London now speaks with a Polish, Latvian and Hungarian accent. To be sure there are Eastern European workers in other parts of Britain. But the sheer scale of the diversity on display in London - with more nationalities living here than in any other city on earth - sets the capital apart.
This, then, may be Blair's true legacy for London: to have let the gales of globalised market forces gust through this city, showering gold here, bringing in new people there - and changing the landscape throughout. The Blair adventure began in this city, that dawn morning at the Festival Hall just over ten years ago. And it will end here, at Downing Street in a matter of weeks. Londoners may love him, they may hate him, but all of them must admit it: the Blair era changed this city for ever.
Posted on May 10, 2007 05:59 PM