©Michele Monticello Essay https://www.michelemonticello.com/ all photos ©Michele Monticello

Written after listening to a Sunday morning discussion on Sky News. Sunday 28th June 2026

The discussion centred on London’s productivity and whether the capital is treated fairly in comparison with the rest of the country. What stayed with me wasn’t the economic argument. It was something subtler, the tone. There seems to be a growing hesitation to speak about LONDON as one of Britain’s greatest strengths. The conversation increasingly begins not with what London contributes, but with how its success should be restrained, redistributed, or explained away. It made me wonder whether we are asking the wrong question. Perhaps the real question is not whether London is too successful, but whether we fully understand the role a great capital city plays in the life of a nation.

More than a capital

Every country has a capital, but not every capital carries the same weight. London is not simply the seat of government. It is one of the world’s great cities: a centre of finance, law, culture, education and international commerce. It is one of the principal ways the United Kingdom engages with the wider world. That is not a statement of pride. It is simply a description of what London has become over centuries. It performs a different function from any other city in the United Kingdom, and acknowledging that does not diminish the importance of Birmingham, Manchester, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Belfast, or the countless towns and communities that give this country its character. It simply recognises that different places make different contributions.

Success has its own pressures

Living in London, however, tells a different story from the one often reflected in economic statistics.Success has brought extraordinary opportunity, but it has also brought extraordinary pressure. Housing has become increasingly unaffordable. Transport consumes a significant part of household budgets. The cost of everyday life continues to rise. For many teachers, nurses, transport workers, hospitality staff and young professionals, remaining in the city they help sustain has become a constant calculation. That is the paradox. London may be one of the world’s most productive cities, yet many of the people who keep it functioning feel as though they are slowly being priced out of it. A city that becomes unaffordable for ordinary working people is not simply facing a housing problem. It is risking the diversity, energy and resilience that made it successful in the first place.

Are we framing the debate correctly?

Of course, every part of the United Kingdom deserves investment. Communities across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland should have the opportunity to flourish. A prosperous nation cannot afford to leave parts of itself behind but I sometimes wonder whether, in our determination to achieve that, we have begun to frame London’s success as something to be moderated rather than cultivated. There is an important distinction between sharing prosperity and weakening the conditions that create it. Those are not the same thing. I also wonder whether we have become reluctant to celebrate excellence for fear that doing so somehow diminishes everyone else. Surely a confident nation should be able to do both.

The engine

I keep returning to a simple analogy. A country is like a finely engineered machine. Every component matters. Remove any one of them and the whole system suffers but engines perform a particular role. A high performance engine requires more maintenance, not less. No one would improve a remarkable car by neglecting its engine while polishing the bodywork or replacing the tyres. Every improvement has value, but without a healthy engine the whole machine gradually loses its capacity. That is how I increasingly think about London. Not as a city that deserves special treatment, but as a city that performs a particular function. Looking after it is not an act of favouritism. It is an investment in the strength of the whole system.

Stewardship

Perhaps what concerns me most is not economics at all. It is confidence. Great nations should not feel uneasy about acknowledging their greatest strengths. They should protect them, improve them and ensure that they continue to serve the whole country. This is not an argument for London at the expense of the rest of the United Kingdom. It is an argument against setting them in opposition to one another. A confident nation should be capable of holding two ambitions at the same time: investing in the cities, towns and regions that deserve greater opportunity, while also recognising that its capital is one of its greatest national assets. Those ambitions are not in conflict. They depend upon each other. London’s success does not diminish the rest of the United Kingdom, just as investment in the rest of the United Kingdom should never require London to be diminished. A healthy country should be able to nurture both.

Perhaps that is what troubled me as I listened to the discussion that Sunday morning. The debate seemed to assume that supporting one part of the country somehow requires diminishing another. I don’t believe it does. Great capitals are rare. They take centuries to build and far less time to diminish. London is not separate from the United Kingdom. It is one of the ways the United Kingdom presents itself to the world. Looking after it is not an act of regional favouritism. It is an act of believing in the United Kingdom’s future.

Reference and Articles :

https://news.sky.com/story/politics-latest-burnham-starmer-labour-tories-badenoch-farage-12593360

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-u3Mpk_zUmc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXyN_39nGdc