London is Ukip's worst nightmare
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Version 0 of 1. The past is a foreign country, we've long known that. Scotland is another country, that's the theme of the dominant political battle of the year. But the results of Thursday's elections make you wonder: is London another country too? Even to ask the question prompts embarrassment. It plays to the very case Ukip has long been making, that the media is part of an out-of-touch metropolitan elite concerned chiefly with itself. But the figures speak for themselves. The UK Independence party surged across England, grabbing 23% of the vote – a figure that may well rise with Sunday's European results. Only in one part of England did Ukip tank, shrugged off like a no-hoper fringe party rather than the coming force in British politics. And that place was London. In the capital Ukip scarcely reached double figures. That was never going to be the lead headline on a night that brought delight to Nigel Farage, muted disappointment to Ed Miliband, relative relief to David Cameron, and further kicks to the groin of Nick Clegg. But that London difference is significant all the same – for what it says not only about the political landscape, where it poses a dilemma for both Tories and Labour, but about the changing face of these islands. Asked to explain the party's failure in London, Ukip's Suzanne Evans was asked if she agreed with the Kipper who had said the problem was that the capital was too full of the "cultured, educated and young". She did not dismiss that view, conceding that, yes, there was a "more media-savvy, well-educated population in London" who were more likely to have swallowed press lies about the Faragistes. Put aside the fact that if they're so media-savvy, Londoners should have been less, not more, susceptible to a conspiracy of disinformation. It was an arresting admission, but it was incomplete. For the stats say that Ukip voters are indeed less likely to be graduates than others, but they are also older and whiter. Londoners are, by contrast, more likely to be graduates, younger and less white. No wonder Ukip couldn't succeed in the capital. London is the place that Ukip warns about, the realisation of its worst nightmares. As the 2011 census revealed, white Britons are now a minority in London, accounting for only 45% of the city's population. More than 40% of Londoners were born overseas. Christians form the largest religious group, but they are no longer a majority. The highest proportion of Muslims (and every other religion) in Britain is to be found in London, where (often African) churches, mosques, temples and synagogues thrive. It's not just that the capital is uncongenial for someone who, like Farage, feels uncomfortable hearing languages other than English. It also undermines Ukip's entire argument about immigration and modernity. For if Ukip's core message is that Britons cannot take too much diversity, London stands as a rebuttal. It is the most mixed, diverse place in Britain – but it is also the place apparently least troubled by that variety, a sentiment eloquently expressed in its collective rejection of Ukip. What to make of this difference? For some Londoners, it's grounds for smug superiority, as if the capital and its citizens have reached a higher level of sophistication than the neanderthals in the rest of the country. Such thinking might work on Twitter, but it's a political dead end. For the London difference poses the three main political parties a serious problem. If the capital and its attitudes are at such variance with the rest of the country, then the three established political parties are literally in the wrong place. Headquartered in London, they cannot help but be identified with a metropolitan class out of step with everyone else. Some in Labour see opportunity here. Town hall gains in the London suburbs of Merton, Redbridge and Croydon suggest that, as an area becomes home to younger voters and more people of colour, the Labour vote rises. For the party's optimists, that's a trend that can only get bigger. For surely the entire country, not just London, is heading in that direction. Look at that 2011 census again, which showed a five-point fall in the proportion of white people in Britain since 2001, or at this month's Policy Exchange report – which estimated that between 20% and 30% of Britons will be black or minority ethnic (BME) by mid-century. If the pattern shown this week is repeated, cheerful Labour folk conclude, then the party's base is set to expand in coming decades. They cite the changing US electorate, which has left Republicans relying on an ever-shrinking white vote while Democrats are boosted by expanding minority communities as well as younger, educated Americans who like, rather than lament, their country's changing face. Were that dynamic to be repeated here, and Birmingham or Manchester go the way of London, then the future is Labour's. That leaves the Conservatives with a serious strategic dilemma. To woo the urban – and now suburban – vote from Labour, they would have to modernise further. Equal marriage would have to be more than a one-off: it would have to be typical Tory policy. Yet Conservatives are itching to go in the opposite direction, to chase those voters they're losing to Ukip by promising ever redder meat on welfare and immigration. The party needs to head left and right at the same time – a feat that is near impossible. The sharpness of this dilemma helps one Tory, though. Boris Johnson's 2012 win in London looks like an even greater achievement now than it did then. He managed to assemble a winning majority from both diverse, right-on London and its more homogeneous, whiter outer boroughs. His maverick persona – however confected it might be – seems to appeal to Ukip types. Expect several rattled Tories to insist that if these elections have posed a question, Boris is the answer. But the conundrum presses in on Labour too. Glad though it will be to have the votes of what the LSE's London guru Tony Travers calls "Shoreditch hipsters" and BME suburbanites, they're not plentiful enough to win a general election. Travers notes that Ukip's base – older, whiter and non-graduate – used to be Labour's core vote. In Rotherham and elsewhere, Ukip made serious inroads. Labour needs to win back that traditional base; yet the more it appeals to its new metropolitan backers, the more it risks alienating the old-time heartlands. So Ukip has driven a wedge into both established parties, dividing their coalitions down the middle. As London drifts apart from the rest of the country, as Scotland considers breaking away, and as Labour and Tories alike find themselves torn in two, Britain stands as a country pulled in radically different directions – wondering when we will follow the poet and conclude that the centre cannot hold. Twitter: @freedland |