The London polity
The London Evening Standard is to become a freesheet, the BBC report. thelondonpaper was pulled by News International last month. We are now down to three, non-specialist, London-wide newspapers, the ES, London Lite and Metro. I’m excluding things like Sport, Shortlist and City AM.
This is not good. We will shortly only have two newspapers in London. Television and radio news for London is largely a joke, with the possible exception of the City Hall slot on BBC1’s Politics Show.
London has a population on the order of seven and one-half million. If it were an independent country, it would rank ninety-second out of two hundred odd, behind Burundi and ahead of Switzerland. In terms of GDP per capita, it would be third, behind Luxembourg and ahead of Norway. It is a population, financial and cultural centre. In other words, London matters. From the point of view of the UK, London really matters. What happens within London matters. The politics and governance of London matter.
However, there is no London polity. It is starting to develop on the internet, but the lack of coverage of London politics in traditional outlets (including, I would add, the Standard) suggests that the desire for coverage of the politics of the city is not yet there (or at least not yet recognised). Of course, it’s hard to see to what extent that desire exists, or to generate it, without that coverage. We find ourselves in a catch-22. I think that greater awareness of the existence of London as an important political entity below the national, UK level would be a good thing, for the reasons I describe above. Perhaps the development of some sort of London national sentiment would help, although that has historically required the generation of an imagined community through what Benedict Anderson refers to as print capitalism. Given that we need better and wider supervision of London governance in order to make the same London governance work, I think we have to use the inelegant principle that when you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow; perhaps giving powers to London similar to those Wales had after the first devolution might be a start.
xD.
UPDATE 1550 – I’d like to flag up a couple of posts relating to the London Evening Standard by the Tory Troll and 853.
October 4th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Aye to that – it was embarrassing to see Boris cosy up to Michael Bloomberg in New York recently when their powers don’t compare at all.
http://853blog.wordpress.com/2009/09/18/the-boy-boris-meets-the-man-bloomberg/
Trouble is, Labour doesn’t trust London – witness the early Livingstone ructions, Tube PPP, northern MPs moaning, etc – while the Tories simply don’t want any kind of city-wide government, preferring everything to be devolved down to the 32 squabbling, unrepresentative fiefdoms that are the London boroughs, which are too small to merit London-wide coverage, but which sometimes don’t have any proper local media scrutiny at all (like Greenwich).
And without a London mayor having *real* powers, there’s no real incentive for the media to scrutinise him/her properly.
Media distribution’s also a factor here – in TV terms, London’s broadcast footprint from Crystal Palace also takes in the northern Home Counties, so we’ve always had to share with areas like Luton. Whereas in the US, cable’s been the primary method of TV distribution (in New York, cable is licenced on a borough by borough basis) so broadcasters can have a tighter focus. So while a channel like NY1 would be welcome in London, it just isn’t going to happen when most people watch TV through aerials or dishes.
October 4th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
All very true, although much of the national media is excessively London-focused so media coverage of the city and its politics isn’t exactly confined to those few outlets you mention. You can also add in some of the larger circulation “local” papers like the South London Press.
It’s also very easy to overstate the extent to which the national media really scrutinise and hold Westminster to account.
Tom Chance´s last blog: Who is really ripping us off?
October 4th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
I wouldn’t particularly count Metro as a London paper either, as it’s available in other major UK cities too. It does have some London specific content, but its agenda is not London focused overall.
October 4th, 2009 at 10:29 pm
Darryl,
I both agree and disagree with you; when devolution was being set up for London, the Labour hierarchy was twitchy about it, but I think that was largely because it was obvious Ken was the front runner. The Tube PPP was a mistake, both on the policy itself and in the way it was foisted on London shortly before devolution. However, now it is established, I’d say that they might see the worth of it.
Regarding the northern MPs and the general perception that London receives too much coverage in the national press, I’d say that a growth in London politics and London media would reduce the imbalance as it would no longer be necessary to cover the public life of the single most important part of the country at the national level.
I don’t know whether the Tories would be foolish enough to get rid of citywide governance for London again, though I rather doubt it. What I don’t doubt is that they would favour the boroughs against the GLA.
I hadn’t realise about the media coverage issue – very interesting. That having been said, plenty of people in the Home Counties commute into London and are otherwise attached to it. I wonder how much it costs to have a channel on satellite
There are some pretty good local London papers – the Camden New Journal, for instance – but there isn’t really one for Westminster, where I used to live, and various other places. There’s a problem across the country in municipal politics not receiving enough scrutiny, but London is a region rather than a municipality, albeit a metropolitan region.
Tom,
That’s true, but it doesn’t really help matters as the coverage of London politics in the nationals is a bit superficial and tends to focus on the personality of the Mayor rather than looking at policy impacts in any meaningful way.
I actually think, even though they don’t have as many readers and listeners as I’d like, that the broadsheets and radio programming do a reasonable job of holding the political system up to scrutiny. Whether or not its enough, London is less, and needs more.
Simon K,
Agreed, although it does act towards the imagined community that I mentioned earlier. I’d also say that the ES, London Lite and the defunct thelondonpaper were a bit too focused on going out in zone one.
xD.
October 13th, 2009 at 12:23 am
What we need is regional government all round. Greater London would be one of the regions. Certain powers need to be devolved from UK level, which is grossly overcentralised. The regions should have at least the present powers of the Welsh Assembly. We are already in a better position than most, having a London Assembly elected by PR.
peezedtee´s last blog: Fifty years ago, we never had it so good. Possibly.
October 13th, 2009 at 12:34 am
Peezedtee, I wholeheartedly agree.
October 17th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
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