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| Move Parliament to Wigan! (And seven other way to share out London’s power) | |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| Does Alan Carr know where the Bullring is? If not, he may soon learn: Channel 4, it was reported over the weekend, may soon be asked to pack up its bags and move to Birmingham. Partly, that’s for the £85m that the government could claw back from the sale of C4’s headquarters in the heart of Westminster. But there are bigger reasons: if Channel 4 were to leave London, the thinking goes, it could help stimulate the creative economy outside of the capital — and give another boost to Britain’s second-biggest city. As the Bullring is to shopping outside of the capital, so Carr and co may be to broadcast media. | Does Alan Carr know where the Bullring is? If not, he may soon learn: Channel 4, it was reported over the weekend, may soon be asked to pack up its bags and move to Birmingham. Partly, that’s for the £85m that the government could claw back from the sale of C4’s headquarters in the heart of Westminster. But there are bigger reasons: if Channel 4 were to leave London, the thinking goes, it could help stimulate the creative economy outside of the capital — and give another boost to Britain’s second-biggest city. As the Bullring is to shopping outside of the capital, so Carr and co may be to broadcast media. |
| If it does happen, it’ll be another piece of evidence that the movement to decentralise the British economy is gathering pace – and if it works, it may raise the question: just how much more impact could London’s biggest landmarks have if they dared to cut their ties to the capital? With endless talk of the “northern powerhouse”, the argument for a bit of cultural redistribution has never been stronger. Throw in the idea that the Houses of Parliament might be forced to relocate by the prohibitive costs of fixing the Palace of Westminster and you can begin to see a blueprint for a very different country. “A lot of decisions are driven by the image that investors form of a place,” says Dr Michael Leary-Owhin, co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Urban Regeneration. “If the Houses of Parliament were up north it would massively change the way they were viewed, or if a big museum were to relocate to somewhere not noted for art – it just pings on investors’ radar.” | |
| Related: Goodbye London: why people are leaving the capital | Related: Goodbye London: why people are leaving the capital |
| And, after all, there are plenty of countries that scorn our concentration of eggs in an oligarch’s basket. Washington might be the US’s legislative capital, but economic and cultural life are dominated by New York and Los Angeles; so it is in Australia, where Sydney and Melbourne cede governmental authority to Canberra without letting everything else go with it. The Hague and Amsterdam split Dutch duties perfectly well; Pretoria, Cape Town and Bloemfontein all have distinct roles in South African life. So why can’t we do the same? “Most countries aren’t centrist in that way,” says Tom Bloxham, founder of Urban Splash, a property development business that focuses on urban regeneration. “It’s much healthier to have more cities that aren’t the capital but have an important purpose.” | |
| Things are already moving that way. The establishment of the BBC’s new northern base in Salford is a key example – despite the £2m annual bill for ferrying staff and guests back and forth to London. Meanwhile, the blooming of major museums outside of the capital has at least started to tilt the balance of cultural power away from the south east. If these moves don’t seem to have changed things much yet, have patience, counsels Paul Swinney, chief economist at the Centre for Cities. | |
| “There’s a cultural change that needs to happen and it won’t just change overnight,” he says. “People need to start thinking of moving from Blackburn to Manchester instead of Blackburn to London. There’s a very long timeline for these kinds of things.” And, he cautions, cultural outposts don’t work in a city that isn’t thriving in the first place. “First you have to get the economics right,” he says. “We can’t be captured by the idea that if you get the culture and institutions in place the rest will take care of itself.” | |
| In any case, there’s lots more to do – and if the examples of Channel 4 and parliament show anything, it’s that major institutions with deep ties to London aren’t nearly as immovable as they might seem. So, once we’ve sent the Guardian back to Manchester, how else should we redistribute London’s landmarks? | |
| 1 The Houses of Parliament ⇾ Wigan | 1 The Houses of Parliament ⇾ Wigan |
| If only, politicians often lament, there were some means of bursting the Westminster bubble. Well, actually, there is: the Palace of Westminster needs repairs, and keeping MPs there will make it more expensive. So why not move them out? At a stroke, parliament would be removed from its incestuous relationship with the apparatus of government. If the move is to be permanent, as Ian Jack argued in this newspaper pages, the new home will need to be somewhere closer to the geographic centre of Britain, with good travel times to the whole country: it has to be Wigan. | If only, politicians often lament, there were some means of bursting the Westminster bubble. Well, actually, there is: the Palace of Westminster needs repairs, and keeping MPs there will make it more expensive. So why not move them out? At a stroke, parliament would be removed from its incestuous relationship with the apparatus of government. If the move is to be permanent, as Ian Jack argued in this newspaper pages, the new home will need to be somewhere closer to the geographic centre of Britain, with good travel times to the whole country: it has to be Wigan. |
| 2 British Museum ⇾ Liverpool | 2 British Museum ⇾ Liverpool |
| From Tate St Ives to the Imperial War Museum North, many London landmarks have outposts elsewhere. And, says Philip Long, director of the V&A Museum of Design, Dundee, that can have a huge impact: “It’s contributing to a new confidence,” he says. “It tells everyone that this is a city that can do ambitious things.” But why not go further and ask one of our flagship institutions to put a vote of confidence in the rest of the country by moving wholesale? The British Museum seems symbolically apt, and the idea already has the imprimatur of the thinktank Civitas, which proposed that the museum could head north along with the Royal Opera House and the House of Lords. And with so many of the museum’s treasures the spoils of the British empire, it would make sense to move to the city that was one of the great ports of the empire and the world: Liverpool. | From Tate St Ives to the Imperial War Museum North, many London landmarks have outposts elsewhere. And, says Philip Long, director of the V&A Museum of Design, Dundee, that can have a huge impact: “It’s contributing to a new confidence,” he says. “It tells everyone that this is a city that can do ambitious things.” But why not go further and ask one of our flagship institutions to put a vote of confidence in the rest of the country by moving wholesale? The British Museum seems symbolically apt, and the idea already has the imprimatur of the thinktank Civitas, which proposed that the museum could head north along with the Royal Opera House and the House of Lords. And with so many of the museum’s treasures the spoils of the British empire, it would make sense to move to the city that was one of the great ports of the empire and the world: Liverpool. |
| Related: Prime London rents exceed £100 a day | Related: Prime London rents exceed £100 a day |
| 3 The Queen ⇾ Balmoral | 3 The Queen ⇾ Balmoral |
| Well, she’s an institution of a sort. And what better way to deflect anger at the size of the royal purse (which is expected to rise by £2m next year) than by evicting the royals, renting out Buckingham palace, and then sending Her Majesty out on tour? Perhaps the most suitable place would be Balmoral: she’d either heal the union or permanently wreck it, but either way it’d speed things up a bit. | Well, she’s an institution of a sort. And what better way to deflect anger at the size of the royal purse (which is expected to rise by £2m next year) than by evicting the royals, renting out Buckingham palace, and then sending Her Majesty out on tour? Perhaps the most suitable place would be Balmoral: she’d either heal the union or permanently wreck it, but either way it’d speed things up a bit. |
| 4 Chelsea FC ⇾ Guildford | 4 Chelsea FC ⇾ Guildford |
| London’s ritziest football club, Roman Abramovich’s plaything, is also the one whose removal would send the clearest symbolic message that the country was changing – and they have been struggling for years to find space in super-expensive west London to build a new stadium. Since so many Chelsea fans are based in Surrey, Guildford seems a good bet. The county has a million people and no football league team – and most of the players live in the stockbroker belt anyway. | London’s ritziest football club, Roman Abramovich’s plaything, is also the one whose removal would send the clearest symbolic message that the country was changing – and they have been struggling for years to find space in super-expensive west London to build a new stadium. Since so many Chelsea fans are based in Surrey, Guildford seems a good bet. The county has a million people and no football league team – and most of the players live in the stockbroker belt anyway. |
| 5 Heathrow ⇾ East Midlands | 5 Heathrow ⇾ East Midlands |
| The argument for airport expansion has been won comprehensively by London, with Gatwick and Heathrow squabbling over the spoils with little concern for the rest of the country. But while most airports have grudgingly accepted this, there would be serious downsides for their future: if one of these two airports does get a new runway, it won’t be possible to expand elsewhere and meet the UK’s emissions targets. Then there’s the subtler impact of telling foreign visitors that London is all we have to offer. So relocate Heathrow as a British hub airport – and stick it in the East Midlands, where a perfectly good airport is already hoping to more than double passenger numbers by 2030. | |
| 6 HSBC ⇾ Cardiff | 6 HSBC ⇾ Cardiff |
| It’s often argued that one way of reducing the macho culture that contributed to the global banking crisis would be to hire more women. Here’s another way: move a bank out of London, a mecca for angry young men, with strip clubs, skyscrapers, and class-A drugs in abundance. HSBC is sending its retail branch to Birmingham already, and announced the possible departure of its headquarters. But instead of Hong Kong or New York, why not try the beautiful Welsh capital? And ideally, it should move from high-rises to an out-of-town office park. That’d calm them down a bit. | It’s often argued that one way of reducing the macho culture that contributed to the global banking crisis would be to hire more women. Here’s another way: move a bank out of London, a mecca for angry young men, with strip clubs, skyscrapers, and class-A drugs in abundance. HSBC is sending its retail branch to Birmingham already, and announced the possible departure of its headquarters. But instead of Hong Kong or New York, why not try the beautiful Welsh capital? And ideally, it should move from high-rises to an out-of-town office park. That’d calm them down a bit. |
| 7 Hyde Park ⇾ Manchester | 7 Hyde Park ⇾ Manchester |
| London has tons of green space, and not enough housing. Manchester is in dire need of a proper city centre park. So why not concrete over one of the capital’s verdant bits of greenery (Hyde Park would do, but whichever you like – just ignore the carping of locals like me), cover it in new homes, and use the money made to give Manchester the lung it so desperately needs? | |
| Related: London: the city that ate itself | Related: London: the city that ate itself |
| 8 Harrods ⇾ Aberdeen | 8 Harrods ⇾ Aberdeen |
| If London is giving so much to the rest of the country, it should get something back. Perhaps a grateful nation should agree to take Harrods off its hands, a shop that above all others represents the way the capital has become a soulless magnet for the itinerant superrich. The government should make a compulsory purchase and then send the contents, lock stock and barrel, elsewhere. Since Aberdeen has the highest concentration of multimillionaires in the country, they get the short straw – with apologies and gratitude from Knightsbridge. |