Late last year, London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan gave a speech emphasising London’s need to make common cause with other cities and regions in campaigning for more power. In it he reminded the audience that London is “an English and a British city”. In one sense the statement is a truism. London is the capital of Britain and also a city in England.
But it was also oddly striking. Both London’s champions and its detractors tend to agree that the capital is the very model of a global city – one that has grown apart from its nation. The idea that London is an English city might be considered particularly unorthodox. Britishness, after all, is generally taken to be more cosmopolitan than Englishness, which, especially among progressives, is seen as being a narrow and problematic, if not pathological identity.
But this is a misread of London and of Englishness – and one with unhelpful consequences for our national politics.
