Time to move the capital

The south-eastern corner of England is facing a water shortage this summer. Water companies are applying for drought orders and drawing up plans for a desalination plant on the Thames estuary. Journalists have stopped writing articles about how London subsidises the rest of the country and could survive as an independent city-state.  Instead, they are reviving the old demand for a national water-grid.  London may yet have to go cap-in-hand to the rest of the country for its water.

Outside the South-East, the problem is much less severe. Most of England has had a dry winter but only the area within 70 miles or so of London is deemed at risk of drought. This is partly because south-eastern England has less rain in an average year than the rest of the country.  Thames Water’s antiquated leaking pipes don’t help either. The main cause of the problem, though, is that there are just too many people living in and around London.  Like the shortage of housing, traffic congestion and high property prices, the water shortage could be eased by rebalancing the population.

Yesterday’s Regional Trends report from National Statistics shows the population of London and the South-East continuing to rise and that of the North-West, North-East and Scotland falling.  Most of the jobs created by Britain’s buoyant economy are located in the London area and so people have been moving south.  Britain’s population, like its economy, is becoming increasingly concentrated in the South-East.

Market forces are unlikely to correct this imbalance, at least, not until some major environmental disaster occurs.  To rebalance the country’s economy and population requires government action.  I don’t mean the usual offers of grants for companies to relocate to the North, or the transfer of Civil Service clerical activities to the provinces.  This has been tried before and makes only a marginal difference.

No, the only power that the state has to reverse the shift to the south is to completely relocate the government. Not just the low to medium grade civil servants but the whole Whitehall bureaucracy. The Prime Minister, the Cabinet and Parliament should move north permanently, to one of the major cities, such as Manchester or Leeds. We could even build a new house for the Queen somewhere on the Lancashire or Yorkshire moors.  

At a stroke, such a move would transfer people and government spending away from London, which doesn’t need them, to a city like Manchester, which does. Pressure on property prices in the South-east would ease and Manchester and the surrounding towns would get a welcome injection of capital.  The 150,000 permanent civil servants moving from the South-East would be joined by the Westminster Village.  The ‘allied trades’ of British politics, the journalists, lobbyists, political lawyers and spin doctors would all have to move north too, bringing jobs and spending power with them.

Relocating the government to Manchester or Leeds would bring it closer to the geographical centre of the country and reduce the dominance of London over the rest of Britain. London does not need the government.  It would continue to prosper as a centre of international business, finance and culture even if it was no longer the county’s capital.  The reduction in congestion and the availability of cheaper property might even stimulate further growth for the city.  New York manages to support itself without being the capital of the USA, so London could do just as well.

Of our G8 partners, four of them have their business and administrative capitals in different cities.  The three emerging economies, China, India and Brazil all have their main commercial centres away from their capitals.  The Japanese parliament is actively considering moving out of Tokyo.  That would leave the UK in the company of over-centralised France and Russia, in having its commercial and governmental capitals in the same city.  

Much of the cost of the move could be offset by selling off government buildings in central London. Many of them are in prime locations and would sell for a lot more than the cost of similar offices in the North. The Palace of Westminster would make a great conference centre and think how much rich tourists might pay to stay at Number Ten.    

Separating our government from our main commercial centre would redistribute the population and the economic activity in Britain. It would regenerate a city like Manchester and its surrounding towns, reduce congestion and pressure on land in the South-East and enable us to cancel the third runway at Heathrow.

But if none of these arguments convince you, the clincher surely has to be this – moving the government to Lancashire or Yorkshire would mean that a lot of media luvvies would have to move from North London to the real North. It would be worth doing just to see the looks on their faces.