TOPOGRAPHY: Somewhere Near Brum
A concrete vision
Thanks to the auction of licences for the next generation of mobile phones, the Treasury now has an extra 22 billion pounds sloshing about. Plenty of suggestions have been put to Gordon Brown as to what he could do with it, including: all NHS hospitals cleaned inside (seemingly for the first time since they opened); pensions raised; nuclear-powered aircraft carriers built; and for a laugh, some have suggested the chancellor might even want to consider cutting taxes. What no one has suggested is that he should seize this opportunity to change Britain fundamentally and forever - he should move London.
Or rather, he should use this windfall to finance the short-term costs of moving the 'capital' bits out of London. Leave London where she is, but move all those political institutions - parliament, government departments and state employees - that make her a capital city. Russia is currently debating a similar proposal. Many MPs there want to move from Moscow back to the old capital, St. Petersburg. Unlike the ancient settlement of Moscow, St Petersburg is a relatively recent creation in its present form. Peter the Great, a modernising autocrat, decided that the only way to make his empire more 'western' was to drag his court, and all the institutions of state to just about as far west as he could decently go in Russia.
This is surely appealing logic for Tony Blair. If Britain is to be a 'young, modern, new nation', then what better means of ensuring that, than a capital city which is all those things? Post-war Brazil tried this on an heroic scale when she moved her capital from Rio de Janeiro to the modernist dreamscape of Brasilia. More recently, after reunification, Germany signalled she had rehabilitated herself by moving her capital from Bonn to Berlin. But this is not the path we should follow. Instead other English speaking countries map it out: they all have small, 'professional' capital cities, and share out the cultural and economic goodies with other towns. In Australia the capital is Canberra, and the arts and finance have Sydney and Melbourne. In Canada, it's the same: capital - Ottawa, art and finance - Toronto and Montreal. And in America, whilst Washington is politically supreme, money and culture belong to New York and LA.
All these other English speaking capitals had to be started from scratch, and this is thus new Labour's new opportunity. ‘A new capital for a new country’ is surely the project for the second term. London doesn't need government. Like New York it is one of the handful of true World Cities. Money, in the shape of the city is abundant, and, nowhere else on the planet is there a greater concentration of cultural talent. So it seems a little greedy, and possibly even short-sighted, to demand possession of the bureaucrats and politicians too. If London was liberated of them, they would however be a boon to wherever they went. If for instance the site of the new capital (paid for by the 22 billion remember) was to be in the west Midlands, all the civil service jobs created would more than compensate for the loss of all those vaguely unsettling metal-bashing jobs. And it would take pressure off the South East's overheating economy. Accordingly Londoners would benefit too, from a far more rational property market.
This brings us to the real fun: Mandelsonia, or whatever the place is to be called. (Perhaps there could be a competition on Blue Peter for the kids - 'our future', as the Prime Minister would say - to come up with a name?) Here we need have no fears that the frankly old Britain views of the Prince of Wales would shape the architecture. This is the future we're talking about today. Imagine a city that combined the best of New Labour building style, the Dome, with the sort of transport system we just know John Prescott would deliver if only he had a blank piece of paper to start on! New Labour peer Lord Rogers would doubtless solve the problems of public spaces in this new city (which would still after all be in wet, grey Britain) with some ingenious solution, like, oh I don't know, a wavy glass roof perhaps? David Blunkett will leap at the chance to emulate Napoleon III rebuilding of Paris in the middle of the 19th century. Hence there'll be plenty of wide, spacious boulevards. Pretty to look at, but also convenient for policing any May Day carnival-against-capitalism style demonstrations. Unlike Londoners of course, who see them as a nuisance, the simple people of Mandelsonia will in fact welcome demonstrators as a.) being different, and b.) a welcome boost to the local economy.
Learning from the mistakes of the new Scottish Parliament (four years overdue, ten times its original cost) the House of Commons built in Mandelsonia can be everything the one in Westminster's not. If Labour MPs want a crèche with lean-to debating chamber, they can build one. Then there are the sleek, gleaming white and concrete villas our rulers will, must live in. As for their insides . . . imagine a city where every interior was touched up by Peter Mandelson, it'll be like Notting Hill without the off-putting old stuff.
There are any number of serious reasons for moving the UK's capital: a new one would demonstrate the truth that talent does not have to drain away to just one place; in the internet age it's very old fashioned to think that everything important has to be in the same physical space; even devolution suggests that England as distinct from Britain should have a capital of its own. The real reason though why there's an outside chance it might happen is because, come any second term for Red Ken, the Prime Minister is going to want to wreak an almighty vengeance on London and Londoners for the insult. And what better way than to deprive them of Tony Blair's radiant presence?
Dr Noel Lackland’s new centre-right think tank,Leveller: Disinventing local government, launches in October
Noel Lackland, August 21, 2002 02:32 PM