Friday 13 April 2012

The Capital of Itself

Neil O'Brien has a fascinating and hugely important cover article in this week's Spectator, about the fact that London is now an entirely different country from the rest of the United Kingdom, and no longer even part of Europe in any economically or culturally meaningful sense.

Quite so. And that is the place that has cast, and looks set to cast again, by far the highest vote received by any single Conservative politician, himself with a profile vastly higher than that of almost any member of the Cabinet. The Conservatives are now the party of the global megarich and of their non-English-speaking servants. No one in Britain votes for them anymore.

Given that you do not need to be British to vote in a local election, how many of Boris Johnson's votes come from subjects of this Realm? The very fact that he wins would indicate that it cannot be very many.

A Conservative Party victory anywhere this year would indicate some degree of estrangement from the nation at large. A thumping win for a very high-profile position with an enormous electorate will demonstrate conclusively an estrangement which is now complete, a metropolis which is simply no longer in Britain at all.

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