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A friend calls it, with some chagrin, the “ring of fire.” It refers to the counties surrounding London that have a tense relationship with the place. They are everything the capital is not: conservative, if not conservative, full of families, car lovers, perhaps without cultural treasures. While far from homogeneous (many Asian households end up moving there), ambient street chatter is not the omnilingual serenade it is within the M25.
The dispute between the two worlds is the following. People in the counties can’t believe that city dwellers pay more to live in a Babel of cramped apartments and phone theft. We, in turn, see them as rubes who at any moment could ask for a Sauvignon Blanc that it’s not Dagueneau. Most big cities have an equivalent interior: the San Fernando Valley, the multitude of bridges and tunnels, etc. If relations are this tense with the traveler fringe, let’s imagine the antagonism between the cities and the deep interior of the nation. Except we don’t need to imagine it. Brexit and the election of Donald Trump made it clear what the core countries think of us.
However, we cannot do without them. I don’t mean something fascinating: something about the value of human difference and learning from each other. I literally mean that big cities wouldn’t work as an economic proposition without many slightly conservative voters in the rest of the country. What does a global city need? Competitive taxes (although not necessarily very low). Non-burdensome regulation. A business-friendly environment. How do they vote? Left.
In 2019, it was the home counties and post-industrial regions that avoided a Jeremy Corbyn premiership, with all that that would have meant for the city. London, including much of prosperous London, voted for him. A decade ago, Paris was falling into a rut of stagnant cuisine and corporate lethargy. Its current dynamism, its financial and technological boom, owes at least something to the reversal of the costs of the François Hollande era for companies. Who did Paris vote for in 2012? Holland.
In essence, the provinces rescue the metropolis from its counterproductive policies. They also stop it in some ways: by supporting Brexit and opposing immigration. But the trade-off is worth it. Cities can withstand these inconveniences in a way that they could not withstand the eternal dominance of a single party, as some Californians could attest. The governing climate in which urban life flourishes is a mix of progressive (liberal immigration rules, infrastructure spending) and conservative (market incentives, tough on crime) ideas. To the extent that big cities have this balance, it is increasingly because the nation as a whole provides the second half.
In other words: why are there so few city-states? As a mode of government, it has centuries more pedigree than the nation state. A larger proportion of humanity now lives in cities than in the days of Medici Florence or Hanseatic Hamburg. Since cities subsidize central areas, there is a casus belli ready to explode. However, beyond Monaco and Singapore, the list of sovereign cities in the modern world shrinks. And the clamor for more people to separate from their countries is almost non-existent.
It is true that the national sentiment is deeper than that of liberals, as I think I am. And defense depends on scale. (Monaco has to turn to France for much of that.) But I wonder if another drawback is that the policy of an independent London or New York would never work. He population it needs to be balanced with tougher conservatism, at least for the current business model of these places to survive. This is truer now than when cities had many center-right voters, before partisan “sorting” of people into like-minded communities.
So yes, on a night out, when the city begins to shine, one’s thoughts naturally turn to secession. There could be visa checks on the M25. There could be universal conscription to defend our republic of 9 million people. And let’s imagine the fiscal surplus. But then I meet another rent control enthusiast who has a book by Yanis Varoufakis on his bookshelf and I wonder. Since the Elizabeth Line was built, there has been a new tone to the snobbery about the ring of fire. The bad news is that it attracts too many overly dressed out-of-towners to spend a night in Hakkasan or wherever. But they not only have the right to be here. They have been, when London’s own judgment faltered, the final guardians of the city.
Email Janan at janan.ganesh@ft.com
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