You see it in the way people talk about that much-disparaged young urban tribe, the hipsters. In the 2015 election, while Labour fell back elsewhere, it gained seven seats in the capital. Nonetheless, it's true that London - wealthier, younger, more diverse - thinks and behaves differently from the rest of the UK. London's GDP is equal to that of Saudi Arabia.Īnd in relation to the rest of the UK, London's dominance is especially striking.ĭuring his 2014 Conservative party conference speech, the city's mayor, Boris Johnson, hit out at “London-bashing”, arguing that the capital's strong performance was good for the whole country because “when the great London flywheel turns faster and faster it helps to drive the vast and intricately connected locomotive that is the British economy”. UK financial services had a trade surplus of $71bn in 2013. More than a third of global foreign exchange takes place every day in London. No-one doubts London's pervasive economic influence. Paris dominates France, but lags behind its British counterpart in terms of international finance, sitting at 37th in the GFCI table. But New York isn't at the same time the seat of political power in the US or home to the nation's central bureaucracy. New York might rival it as an economic hub – though London recently overtook its US rival in the Global Financial Centres Index (GFCI) rankings. Just before this year's UK General Election, listeners of US National Public Radio were told that it “completely dominates the political, cultural and economic life of the UK to an extent rarely seen elsewhere”. Can anywhere else claim to be both an international focal point of such significance and so commanding a national capital?
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