Consider two stories that do not, on the face of it, have much to do with one another but which I, in the manner of an Adam Curtis documentary, intend to demonstrate are actually about the same thing after all.
Firstly, figures published recently revealed that, between 2010 and 2022, the UK’s fertility rate had fallen by nearly 19 per cent, faster than in any other G7 country. The final year of that period saw the number of births in England and Wales drop to its lowest level in 20 years. You don’t have to be a pro-natalist to worry this might have some negative effects, for example setting the country up for a demographic time bomb as the number of pensioners increases relative to those of working age.
The think tank that produced the figures blamed austerity, and its impact on wages and welfare, but it’s called the Centre for Progressive Policy so they would, wouldn’t they? Other explanations proposed by those with other policy priorities have included the depressive effect of climate breakdown, changing gender roles or the lack of affordable childcare. Depending on your politics, you may find some of these arguments more convincing than others.
The second story, dating from the week before, is that Amy Lamé was to quit as London’s “night czar” after eight years in the post. Few seemed to mourn: it’s a few years now since such matters have concerned me, but a popular opinion these days seems to be that London’s nightlife these days is terrible, with things closing comically early, nowhere you can plausibly bar hop and everything costing a fortune. The night czar – an awkward title obviously chosen only because “night mayor” sounded silly – no doubt had limited powers at her disposal to stop this rot. Nonetheless, the very visible decline on Lamé’s watch meant raised eyebrows aplenty about her ever escalating salary, which hit £132,846. What exactly was it for?
These stories may seem unconnected – but both have their roots, ultimately, in the sheer cost of physical space. One of the more convincing explanations for the fertility bust is the fact you can’t have kids without enough rooms to put them in and a measure of confidence you won’t be turfed out on a whim: with the housing market in its current state, those things are hard to access. In the same way, the sheer price of physical space in London means it costs more to run a bar or a club. That pushes prices up, which pushes customer numbers down, and means those residents who are paying a fortune for nearby flats are likely to be whinier about the noise to boot.
There’s another way in which these things are actually one story. Bring up either – the nightlife is bad, I can’t afford to have children here! – and sooner rather than later you’re likely to bang into the same response: Why on Earth are all you people still living in London? Why not instead head for any of the other fine cities this country has to offer, where you might be able to buy a house and not everything shuts at 11? “I live in one,” they’ll say. “It’s great.”
The people who ask this are annoying, and would also, I suspect, not actually be pleased to see thousands of London émigrés showing up on their doorstep. But it is nonetheless a good question: Why haven’t those priced out of London and the other expensive bits of the south taken their skills and their ambitions elsewhere and started to close the north-south divide? Why has a feedback loop never kicked in?
As it happens, there are many reasons why people who can’t really afford it still insist on living in expensive places like London (or Oxford or Cambridge or Brighton or-). For some, it’s because they grew up in those places, their social links are there, and they are understandably a bit pissed off at being priced out. For others it’s because they are doing jobs which aren’t that well-paid, but which cities still need to function, and it’s simply not realistic to expect them all to commute in from Darlington. (I’m not going to link to the guy whose comment I’m referencing here, because he was a civilian not a politician, but honestly!)
For many, though, the answer is the same as it ever was: it’s the economy, stupid. The high value service industries in which Britain now specialises require less physical space than manufacturing, and so tend to cluster. It’s plausible that serious problems recruiting or retaining staff could cause some of them to rethink and up sticks, but that’s obviously a more complicated matter for a firm or an industry than an individual, and it mostly hasn’t happened yet.
And so, in many sectors that suck in thousands of graduates each year – government, media, finance, tech – building a career still means moving to London. It doesn’t matter that they’re never gonna be about to buy a house and have a family here, or that there aren’t even any good bars to go to to bemoan the fact. This is where the jobs are, so this is where they go.
This is, of course, a sub-ideal way to run a country, but changing it is in no way in young people’s gift. If it were, one suspects, more of them might have given up on this town years ago.
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