Joy. Another white, middle-aged, middle-class, middlebrow media wanker unaccountably convinced that the mundane minutiae of his life will somehow be fascinating to anyone outside his family, as if 6,000 people didn’t move house in the UK every day.
Another smugly self-deprecating, unedifying example of the “lifestyle journalism” that is to Woodward and Bernstein what potato prints are to Picasso. Another irreverent, irrelevant addition to the weekend magazine hall of lame that also brought you The Pavements Near Our House Aren’t Wide Enough For Our IVF Triplets’ Stroller, Our Cleaner’s Retirement Has Halved Our Number Of Black Friends, and I Boiled My Wooden Spoons (hey, why rack your brains dreaming up columns of eye-watering banality when Adrian Chiles exists?).
Why I left London, the city I loved
Why I had to leave London
Why I left London
Why I left London (for good)
Why I left London and I’m never going back
I moved to the coast – now I’m back in London
Leaving London was a wrench, but Coventry has so much more to offer (!)
Live in London? No thanks, I’m happier in Bath
Since I am indeed a white middle-class media wanker, there will inevitably be an element of that. The difference here is that I’m not publishing this with a view to dazzling all and sundry with my whimsical observations on the trivial tribulations of my otherwise immaculate life, but (hopefully) to throw some light on a topical issue.
Because there is a small but extremely vocal group of people out there who (should they, uncharacteristically, be seized by the desire to read something longer than a meme) will be breathlessly scrolling down this page hoping to find a motive for my move something like the following:
I’m leaving London … because London has fallen.
Yes, the once great capital of this once great nation, a thousand years proudly uninvaded, has finally succumbed to the howling Muslim hordes and the legions of Quisling woke warriors who gave them covering fire.
After a final brutal assault at Waterloo, despite the sterling rearguard action of the regiments of Beefeaters, black cab drivers, pearly kings and queens, estate agents and tour guides, and for all the noble sacrifices of field commanders Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson, leading fearlessly, as ever, from the front, the capital of the United Kingdom is now in enemy hands.
And, since former mayor, now caliph, Sadiq Khan, hoisted the crescent-and-star over Buckingham Palace, change has blown across the city like the sirocco.
Sharia law has been rolled out across No-Go Zones 1-6; the Tower of London has been fitted with a dome and renamed the London Minaret; Seven Sisters has become Seven Sleepers; West Ham has been declared haram; and the Emirates Stadium is, well, an emirate.
No words could more trenchantly convey the sense of loss than this ballad from our beloved war poet:
The Warning
By A B dP Johnson
I warned you. I said, “Stop the boats!
Keep Winston on our five-pound notes!”
And now our bowler-hatted workers
Have swapped their bowler hats for burkas.
One could instantly disprove this nonsense, of course, by asking any of London’s 9 million residents, 2 million daily commuters or 35 million annual tourists instead of blindly accepting the word of an anonymous Facebook account. Only one of the throng who’ve inflicted their relocation woes upon us mentioned the Islamisation of London even in passing (prize for guessing where that was published: a six-month subscription to the Spectator), and it certainly had nothing to do with my decision.
But the fact that the forces of darkness have now persevered with their absurd disinformation campaign for several years suggests they think it’s cutting through.
It’s certainly reached the point where British politicians have raised alarm bells, warning of possible damage to tourism and foreign investment.
The inconvenient facts are as follows. In the 2021 census, 41% of Londoners identified as Christian, down from 58% in 2001 (a change that mirrored the picture across the country), while 15% gave their religion as Islam, up from 8.5% in 2001.
I lived in two of the areas of London with the highest concentration of Muslims – Harrow and King’s Cross – for a total of 17 years, and not once was I menaced or warned off entering a street or charged the jizya tax. The only people who ever tried to convert me to their ways were a pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses and a slightly inebriated West End actor in the back of a cab.
But if the Great Replacement is still some way off, why are so many people – and more importantly, me – defecting to the Countryside Alliance? In 2022 alone, it’s estimated that 125,000 people forfeited their city slicker status (although that probably had a lot to do with Covid, and about 66,000 others made the opposite journey).
I thought my own move might be an opportunity to examine whether some of the many preconceptions about London are still, or were ever, true.
It’s not safe
The “Londonistan” posts are often found in close proximity to another trope, this one more effective for having some basis in truth. Bots and far-right fearmongers often portray the city as a giant, lawless favela, a jungle of shattered glass and graffitied concrete whose streets, piled high with burning tyres and syringes, are patrolled by gangs of machete-wielding rapist crack dealers while the Metropolitan police dance for tourist photos. It’s a tableau particularly beloved of the Daily Mail (headquartered in Kensington, London), the Daily Telegraph (Victoria, London), the Daily Express (Canary Wharf, London) and more recently GB News (Paddington, London).
Unarguably, for much of its history, London has had its dangers. But times change. While one or two of the other City quitters did mention safety fears in their reasons for leaving, none reported anything more traumatic than having their bag nicked. Personally, I was a victim of crime exactly once in 30 years (randomly headbutted in a pub by an ex-marine with PTSD).
And the statistics bear us out. London’s murder rate, having fallen consistently for years, now stands at 1.07 per 100,000 people, one-fifth of the rate for the US as a whole. It’s a similar story for other serious offences: in the 12 months to March 2025, the rate of violent crime with injury in London was 26.40 per 1,000 population, well below the UK average of 31.88.
London does comfortably top the national rankings on theft, but this is almost all attributable to a huge recent spike in mobile phone snatching from tourists outside tube stations that seems to be the work of a few highly organised gangs (there’s a useful list of hotspots here).
And while rural drivers are more likely to stop to let pedestrians cross (sometimes even when there’s no crossing), they’re also more likely to run them over. About 100 people are killed on London’s roads each year, which works out at half the national fatality rate.
It’s so grim
I’ll admit it: the air around my new home is sweeter than it was in King’s Cross. The walks are more scenic and hygienic, the local waterways are a slightly lighter shade of brown, and the Northern lights are a definite improvement on 737 landing lights.
But these were all incidental bonuses rather than the primary pull factor, because, frankly, London’s much less grey and greasy than it used to be.
No city is without its less salubrious districts. But one of the remarkable things about London is its capacity for renewal. In my 30 years there, dozens of areas were transformed from uninhabitable to unaffordable in a matter of years: the gentrification of Islington was almost complete when I arrived in the early 90s, and was soon followed by Hackney, Brixton, Shoreditch, Walthamstow and New Cross.
Weatherwise, too, London’s reputation is undeserved. Its average rainfall of 550mm a year makes it drier than Toulouse, Bordeaux, Vienna, Lisbon, Monaco, Florence and Istanbul. Temperatures rarely dip below freezing, and it’s one of the UK’s brightest cities, getting more sunshine than Brussels and Berlin.
With 8 million trees and 3,000 parks, London also has plenty for the chlorophyllophile. While its tapwater is some way down the national league tables, it’s quite safe to drink. And it’s really time it shook off the old Big Smoke moniker, given the huge improvements in air quality courtesy of initiatives largely implemented by Sadiq Khan: LEZ, ULEZ and Low-Traffic Neighbourhood schemes, the School Streets Initiative, Clean Air Zones, the Healthy Streets planning framework, the provision of more protected cycling space, the rollout of electric vehicle charging points, zero-exhaust buses and zero-emission-capable taxis, the Air Quality Fund and anti-engine-idling awareness campaigns. (Many of which schemes were, needless to say, vociferously opposed by the same entities who slag off London today.)
People are part of the environment too, and the picture there is more mixed. While London is far and away the wealthiest area of the UK, with dozens of billionaires and around 200,000 millionaires, it’s also home to some of the worst poverty. Unemployment stands at 7%, two percentage points above the national average. Six per cent of residents are on benefits, as compared with 4% across the UK. Twenty-six per cent of Londoners are below the poverty line, the highest proportion in the country, and 200,000 people were reckoned to be without a permanent home in 2025, 12,000 of whom slept rough.
The sporadic pangs of guilt aren’t pleasant, but let’s be real: no one ever ran to the hills because of someone else’s misfortune.
It’s so pricey
One’s own misfortune, of course, is a different matter, and several middle-class wankers brought up the money thing. (It should be noted in passing that if London had truly fallen to invaders, then rents and prices would presumably have fallen commensurately, which plainly is not the case.)
Retail prices aren’t the problem. If rent is excluded, the cost of living in the big city is only about 25% higher than in the rest of the country, a difference handily covered by London salary weightings (the median is £10,000 above the UK average).
The key phrase here is “if rent is excluded”. Londoners have to shell out 40% of their monthly income on accommodation, compared with 30% nationally, and it’s getting worse, fast. Shortly before I left, my landlord raised the rent on my mouldy shoebox in Harrow by 12%, citing market rates. (By “market rates”, of course, he meant he was raising the rent not because he had to, but because he could; because he could rake in more money for no additional investment or work.)
Yes, being able to fully open my oven door without it banging into the washing machine in my new abode is a nice bonus. But it still wasn’t the driving force behind my departure. In a city with so much to do, I rarely needed my home to be much more than a ceiling over a bed.
It’s full of wankers
With a small town, a small city and a seaside resort on my residential CV as well as the capital, I can report that yes, Londoners may, at first glance, appear a little aloof – it’s a self-defence mechanism that kicks in in all large concentrations of people – but underneath, they’re as likely to be angels or arseholes as anyone.
It’s true, I’d learned all my neighbours’ names within an hour of moving into my new place, whereas in London all I ever found out about them next door was their favourite future-funk tunes and the average duration of their intercourse.
Similarly, in all my many hours in London cafes, no one once sat at the next table and struck up a conversation. If they had, though, they probably wouldn’t have opened with “This is a lovely little town, isn’t it? At least, it was, before all the immigrants.” (The population here is 95% white British. A few dozen asylum seekers are being housed locally, none of whom, to date, has caused a nuisance.)
The world beyond the M25 can be a bit local-shop-for-local-people. The flag density around my new abode is noticeably higher, and I share a postcode with a regional HQ for Ukip. It’s early days, but so far it really does seem that the metropolitan elites are a bit more, well, cosmopolitan.
It’s full of tourists
While Londoners generally don’t hate immigrants, because we’ve met some, there is one invasion we’re less crazy about.
Standing on the wrong side of the escalator in defiance of the clearly marked signs. Stopping at the top of the escalator to get their bearings. Barging into crowded trains at rush hour with Zeppelins strapped to their backs. Breezily ambling three abreast on the pavement, forcing anyone coming the other way to dive into the path of traffic. Demanding directions to the Harry Potter shop they’re standing outside.
Saying goodbye to London’s tourists may not have be the hardest thing I’ve done, but they were hardly grounds for evacuation.
It’s so hectic
We might now, judging by the murmurings of the other wannabe Wurzels, be nearing the nub of it. Many have written of their desire for a change of pace, a need to escape London’s relentlessness. (Although in many cases, one suspects this is code for free grandparental childcare.)
I have sympathy. Big-city buzz is all very well, but when you can’t switch it off, it starts to feel like tinnitus. And there comes a point when you realise that although you have a smorgasbord of treats on your doorstep, you just don’t smorgas much as you used to.
Even so, it wasn’t the pursuit of peace that drove me out. I did a reverse Dick Whittington once before, in my late 30s, to live with my partner in Leeds and then Devon, and in both locations, the discussion about how to fill the evening all too often took the form “Pub or DVD?”. Getting away from it all means exactly that: as well as pressure and stress and noise, you’re giving up pizzazz, razzmatazz, and all that jazz.
Please, just tell us already
Obviously, I didn’t move to pastures greener in pursuit of better employment prospects or superior retail opportunities. Nor was I drawn here by the awesome transit system. (I have overheard locals talk in hushed tones of a supernatural entity dubbed the “Omni-Bus”, a cuboidal beast standing fully three men high, which swallows its victims whole, only to regurgitate them slightly closer to their desired destination. I’ve even seen signs along the road warning of when these creatures are likely to appear. But since I’ve yet to clap eyes on one, I must assume they are an old wives’ tale.)
None of us middle-class wankers moved out of London to escape the traffic, first because public transport obviates the need for driving, and second because while snarl-ups do occur – on the all-too-regular occasions when London Underground staff go on strike – congestion levels have remained steady at 20 billion vehicle-miles per year for 30 years, despite a 40% increase in population.
And only a fool would self-rusticate in the hope of improved mobile phone reception, higher broadband speeds or the reduced chance of flooding.
That’s it. I give up. I’m going to watch a cat video instead
The truth is, no one ever moved out of London because London changed. Change is what London does. Middle-class twats are upping sticks for the sticks because we have stopped changing. London is a place for plastic minds and elastic bodies, and once rigor mortis starts setting in, you’re no longer a good fit.
Those who know me, or who have followed the blog, will know I have a health condition that affects my strength, stamina, and, on thankfully rare occasions, continence. When I was young and fit, I barely noticed the almost total absence of public benches and public toilets in the capital. But recently, those deficiencies have become impossible to ignore.
London has its problems. Of course it does. But by my reckoning – and by just about every statistical metric – things are getting better, not worse. It’s still a fantastic city. It’s just a fantastic city with nowhere to sit and nowhere to shit.
Floored by the humour and relatability (and alliteration) in this article, Andy Bodle 🙂