Why must we worry about London’s success?

For a long time my view of the Imperial Capital — as, like other Scots, I am still prone to considering London — was borrowed from Joseph Conrad’s description of its riverside: ‘It is a thing grown up, not made. It recalls a jungle by the confused, varied and impenetrable aspect of the buildings that line the shore, not according to a planned purpose, but as if sprung up by accident from scattered seeds. Like the matted growth of bushes and creepers veiling the silent depths of an unexplored wilderness, they hide the depths of London’s infinitely varied, vigorous, seething life.’ London was mysterious, huge and confusing. I disliked it intensely.

Times change. London seems a place transformed these days. It fizzes. By the end of next year, it is estimated, more than 8.6 million people will live in London — more than at any point in its history. It seems typically British that more time is spent worrying about this obvious success than celebrating it. Ours is a country in which success comes with a catch.

There is much talk of the London problem and the need to ‘rebalance’. Last year Neil O’Brien, now chief policy adviser to George Osborne, warned in these pages about London’s ‘overwhelming gravitational attraction’. But is this new? It seems improbable, given that a greater share of Britain’s population chose to live in London before the second world war than today. London has always been a behemoth. What has changed in the past 20 years is that the city’s long post-war decline has been reversed.