London is an exceptional city. Anyone who lives or works here knows this, but its exceptionalism has been turned against it in recent years. Far-Right activists have sought to paint the capital as a hostile and misgoverned hell-hole and UK pundits such as Paul Collier and David Goodhart single London out as both the cause of the nation’s ills and a dysfunctional hotbed of cosmopolitans (“anywheres”, in Goodhart’s phrase) connected to place and each other by the weakest of ties.
Is there anything in this critique, even in its milder forms? In early December, the government’s annual Community Life Survey was published, based on questionnaires completed earlier this year by 175,000 people in England. On some measures (feelings of loneliness, volunteering and charitable giving), the differences between London and other regions are marginal. But in three areas the capital seems to stand out.
Out of England’s nine regions, London has the lowest proportion of people saying they feel a sense of belonging to the local area. This is most pronounced in boroughs such as Tower Hamlets and Newham. Similarly, Londoners are least likely to say that they talk regularly to neighbours, that their neighbours pull together to fix problems or that their neighbours can be trusted.
So far, so Goodhart-ian. However, while London is the lowest-scoring region, many of the lowest scoring localities are outside the capital – places such as Southampton, Reading, Boston, Mansfield, Nottingham, Crawley, Oxford and Cambridge. These are quite diverse in terms of prosperity, but share relatively large levels of population mobility – people moving in and out of the area – often because of large student populations. Weaker social ties should not be a surprise among populations that are continually changing.
Significantly, while London scores low on these indicators, it remains above average for perceptions that people from different backgrounds get on together: weak social ties do not mean hostility or intolerance. That said, some London boroughs (notably Barking & Dagenham, Bexley and Havering, a trio that will feature again in this piece) have lower than average scores for this indicator too.
A second set of polling questions asks about relationships with place: do people think their local area is attractive, are they proud to live there, how satisfied are they overall? London is less of an outlier here, generally scoring a bit below average, more like the northern urbanised regions than the rural and small-town populations of south east and south west England.
Within London there is a consistent pattern: outer London boroughs in the north east and west of London give their local area a lower rating than the English average; Bromley and relatively prosperous riverside boroughs of south west London tend to score higher – as do other more prosperous places outside the capital. A second unsurprising finding, maybe: people who can afford to live in more affluent places tend to like them more.
More interestingly, London is a strong outlier on whether their local area has improved recently, even though positive responses to this question are scarce. Eighteen per cent of Londoners said their local area had improved as a place to live over the past two years, compared to 11 per cent of people across England (59 per cent nationwide say their area has not changed significantly one way or another, but we don’t have the regional data for this).
The 12 top scorers among nearly 300 local authorities were all in London. Waltham Forest, Southwark, Hackney, Lambeth and Wandsworth top the list, with 23 per cent or more of residents identifying positive change.
This last finding may connect with Londoners’ relationship to local politics and public services. London as a whole had higher levels of civic engagement (from contacting councillors, to demonstrating, to responding to consultations). Londoners from across the city reported more engagement and believed they had more impact on decision-making than people living outside the capital.
Five of the ten areas with the highest participation rates were in London (Waltham Forest, Haringey, Hackney, Richmond upon Thames and Lewisham). And Londoners from across the city wanted to engage more in decision-taking (33 per cent, compared to 28 per cent across England).
Results are not uniform, and there are a few boroughs – principally Barking & Dagenham, Bexley and Havering – that buck the London trend, but the overall message is one that should give some comfort to London’s leaders. Citizens of the capital feel more engaged with the way their city is governed and more positive about the way it is changing than people in other places do.
This may partly result from the type of people who live in London (more educated and engaged in general), but could also be seen as a vote of confidence in the Mayor of London and its boroughs. The President of the United States can rant all he likes about the “terrible job” done by London’s leaders, but that’s not how it looks to Londoners.
There is a more specific relevance too, as we peer blearily into 2026. Nigel Farage has high hopes for the borough elections in May, but Londoners’ views may yet scupper these. Research by Kings Policy Institute suggests that a feeling of powerlessness over public services is strongly associated with planning to vote for Reform UK.
The flip side is that if people feel more positive about their ability to make a difference, as nearly 30 per cent of Londoners do, their likelihood of voting Reform UK should decrease. Londoners’ relative positivity about how their city is changing and their sense of civic engagement could be powerful bulwarks against change in May. Borough leaders will want to bolster both in the next four months.
Richard Brown 