London has impressed itself upon the world as an imperial metropole, a financial hub, a destination for migrants – and now as a subject of moral panic. Excitable chronicles of this “billionaire’s playground” have become a genre of foreign journalism in recent years.
According to these lurid dystopias, which have been given new life since the Ukraine crisis, London is being hollowed out by venal and sometimesbloodstained plutocrats from countries steeped in authoritarianism. Entire streets stand empty – it is rarely specified which ones – as the mere investments or trophies of remote foreigners. Ordinary people flee the excruciating cost of everything. Between the overclass and the indentured workers who serve them (exactly how they serve them if they are not present is never explained) languishes a withered, resentful middle.
Against this kind of hysteria, only numbers will do. Between 2001 and 2011, London’s population grew from 7.3m to 8.2m. It is expected to reach 9m before the decade is out. The only one of the 33 boroughs to experience a drop was Kensington and Chelsea, which lost 200 of its 158,000 residents. Westminster council, which includes Mayfair, Marylebone and other oligarch neighbourhoods, grew by 21 per cent.