The German Luftwaffe failed to destroy London. Businesses continued to operate, services were delivered and although some people left the capital for places that were not so heavily bombed, most Londoners still considered London as their city, their home and worth staying and fighting for. Crime was as effectively policed as it could be in the circumstances and even serial killers like Gordon Cummings were apprehended and brought to justice something that seems miraculous when you consider just how many other matters that the Met police, City police and the police forces that bordered London were having to deal with.

Social mores changed quickly in wartime London and a shared adversity spawned a certain degree of tolerance for those who were previously considered as outsiders. The artists model and public personality Quentin Crisp once said of wartime London that in the blackout it became ‘like a giant double bed’ which indicates just how liberal certain parts of London had become because there were greater threats around to society than the activities of a few gays.

Thousands of people died in bombing raids during the London Blitz but the city stayed functioning. The Germans did not, as they thought they would, manage to demoralise the inhabitants of London to such an extent that they abandoned the city en masse. People went to work, to war duties, they socialised, they lived as full a life as they could despite the threat of death raining down on them from the skies. The people had faith that after the war the city could be rebuilt. There was, from what I can gather from reading histories of the time, faith that the institutions of London such as the London County Council, the police and the additional wartime organisations would serve Londoners to the best of their ability. The city and its institutions functioned and London and Londoners survived although the scars of the bombing lasted for decades after the war.

Although today people are not facing death by German bomb there is little doubt in my mind that London is in trouble and that trouble has got worse since Sadiq Khan was elected, on relatively small turnouts, as Greater London Mayor. Whenever I have to visit the place, which I do on a regular basis, those Londoners of my acquaintance, both White and Black, tell me that they hate the city now. They hate the rising crime, the expense of living in the city along with Khan’s lunatic policies such as vehicle movement charges, the increasingly dangerous and failing schools, the mismanaged public transport system, the greedy but inefficient and possibly corrupt local governments and the constant fear that their sons will be stabbed to death and their daughters will be sexually exploited.

Unlike in wartime the institutions of London have failed the very people they were set up to serve. Both Khan and the Greater London Authority waste money hand over fist on worthless projects such as the Sistah Space group merely because the group ticks a ‘diversity’ box or on grandiose ‘redevelopment’ projects that often leave those in the project’s area worse off than they were before. Industry is fleeing the city and the high streets are shabby and dominated by shady phone shops and shops selling rotting fruit in bowls. This is because some of these high streets are now so full of crime that people who would once have shopped in places like Wood Green in North London or East Ham High Street to the East or Woolwich’s Powis Street to the South, don’t want to take the risk of being mugged or pickpocketed or worse and take their trade, if they can travel and have the money to do so, to big out of town shopping centres like Lakeside or Bluewater.

London was already in trouble with regards to crime and quality of life when Boris Johnson was Mayor but under Khan things have declined markedly. When I visit and talk to Londoners all I seem to hear are people’s dreams of getting out. They don’t want to bring up children there and neither do they want to grow old there. They don’t want their child to be bullied because they are the only White or Jewish child in the class and neither do they want, if they are Black and believe in stable families, want their children exposed to the appalling and violent street culture of out of control and dangerous young men that has been in a significant degree created by the state’s encouragement of single parent families. Too many Londoners who I’ve talked to fear getting ill or old or becoming vulnerable or having to rely on public services that in some boroughs are suspected of being allocated on the basis not of what a person’s needs are but on the grounds of who the person is, what ‘community’ they belong to and whether they ‘know’ someone on the council who owes them a ‘favour’.

London is a complete and utter mess and the blame for that lies with its leaders. London survived the Luftwaffe and managed to rebuild because the community of the city willed it and because this community had faith that the city could be rebuilt and improved after the devastation brought about by the Germans. I doubt very much that London will improve as a city with its current leadership. London might have survived the depredations of the Luftwaffe but I doubt it will survive much more Khan because those who have the gumption and enthusiasm for making the city better are leaving in their droves.

ADDENDUM

I’m not the only one with a distinct animus against the appalling Khan.  Just check out this Twitter feed https://twitter.com/SadiqKhan/status/1609361324017963009  and this one https://twitter.com/BurnsideNotTosh/status/1609587318779699203?cxt=HHwWhoCzre7Is9YsAAAA