Much of Britain's political and media class, including this magazine, is London-centric. Yet we are London-centric in a careless, nose-in-the-air sort of way. How many of you, for example, know that the city is set to absorb nearly 1m people in the next decade, helping to take the share of foreign-born residents close to 50 per cent? And that housing these people without infringing the green belt will mean increasing the average density of dwellings at least threefold? Even more startling, did you know that London is one of the least dense cities in the west, and if it were as packed as Paris, its population would be 35m rather than 7.5m?
A chunk of this issue is devoted to the London question and a conversation with Ken Livingstone, the city's socialist mayor. Livingstone has been a better mayor than many expected. While keeping one foot in his old anti-establishment camp, he has made an accommodation with capitalism similar to those former leftists who now sit around the cabinet table. How could he not have done so, as mayor of a capitalist city-state powered by financial services? London is a postmodern megalopolis, and Ken is a postmodern mayor. London is also living proof that in the last 25 years the right has won the economic argument and the left the cultural. Most of Ken's leftism these days is of the multicultural kind, and much of his London electorate seems to be more interested in gender and racial equality than the old economic sort. London's "live and let live" tolerance—or indifference—may be a cultural strength, but there is such a thing as society: Ken is too dismissive of those, like Trevor Phillips, who worry about segregation in the capital. Twenty-first century London is a giant experiment that has yet to be tested by an economic downturn or a sustained terror campaign.
I am the great-great-great grandson of an American slave owner, so I was especially interested in Richard Dowden's comments on taking seriously the argument for reparations (see also James Walvin on this topic). Dowden points out that the Atlantic slave trade is scarcely an issue at all in the parts of west Africa, such as Nigeria, where the slaves actually came from. But as Nigeria heads to a crucial election—for the whole of Africa too—it has plenty of other things to worry about, as Jonathan Power discovers. And Tim King discusses the French election with the devil himself, Jean-Marie Le Pen.
