So about this north London thing. Anyone who watches politics will have noted the conservative neurosis about this part of the capital. For Liz Truss, it was people in taxis with “north London townhouses”. Rishi Sunak similarly sniped at the benighted region in his first prime minister’s question time.
It is, sadly, normal for politicians to drive a wedge between capital cities and the rest of the country. For the Tories this is, more usefully, a dig at Labour, whose last three leaders have all lived in north London, while Keir Starmer and Jeremy Corbyn also represent constituencies in the area. Conservatives have also long enjoyed moaning about Islington lawyers (Blair, Starmer, at least one of Boris Johnson’s wives). Mind you, I sympathise with the Islington point. The new road layout at Highbury Corner is enough to addle anyone’s brain.
The aim in this lazy othering of North London is to suggest a sheltered out-of-touch elite, while the gritty, salt of the earth types like Sunak, who until recently held a US green card, stayed close to ordinary people in his Kensington home. Liz Truss also drew an important distinction between the north of the capital and her own, not at all fashionable, Greenwich home.
As someone raised in north London who has since fled south of the river I have mixed views on this. I may have sought political asylum after a hazardous journey across the river but what if I still carry the stigma of north Londonism? You can take the man out of Wembley but can you take Wembley out of the man?
Perhaps I was radicalised at Brent Cross where liberal extremists are known to frequent the shopping centre cafés
What if the Tories are on to something and my deviations from acceptable political norms are the results of endemic north Londonism? Was it something in the water? Or maybe I need to face up to my childhood political traumas in such liberal recruiting grounds as Dollis Hill, Cricklewood and Cockfosters, cesspools of globalism every one.
Perhaps I was radicalised at Brent Cross where liberal extremists are known to frequent the shopping centre cafés. The security services believe that the powerful north London cell of the metropolitan, globalist elite meets routinely at Patisserie Valerie, while Lola’s Cupcakes is under 24-hour surveillance as a known hang-out of the Blob which is responsible for every government failure. And maybe it wasn’t just the hazardous journeys on the 182 to my Saturday job at the shopping centre. Perhaps it was those evenings scarfing down buns and cappuccinos at the Coffee Cup in Hampstead, where I was groomed by social democrats, determined to convert me to the merits of the single transferable vote.
Maybe something happens on the Northern line. It’s fine up to Warren Street but somewhere between Chalk Farm and Mornington Crescent, we are polluted with a vicious broad-mindedness and tolerance of other lifestyles. Government efforts are now focused on catching people by Kentish Town or Belsize Park. Once they get beyond Archway or Hampstead, all hope is lost. Likewise, the Piccadilly and Victoria lines above King’s Cross are very much the 38th parallel separating decent Londoners from the deviant outer suburbs.
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To be on the safe side, I’ve been attending North Londoners Anonymous, an essential step as there are a lot of Lib Dems in my part of the world. They teach us the three steps from north Londonism (Edgware to King’s Cross, change to the Piccadilly line, change again at Hammersmith and breathe the clear blue air as you head west on the district line).
Happily I have a solution. The north London freeport, an area between the North Circular and the M25 committed to exploiting the growth opportunities of Brexit and reskilling our economy in whatever way the government says is appropriate. We want to be taken seriously as a region and no longer reduced to a lazy caricature by the Westminster elite. We also demand the relocation of civil service staff to Dalston Junction and Arnos Grove.
As freeports are one of Sunak’s pet ideas, we feel this could show the north is mending its ways. I may have got out in time but my commitment to tackling this social problem is undimmed. Our mantra must be no north Londoner left behind.
Follow Robert on Twitter @robertshrimsley and email him at [email protected]
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