
Will London Fall? - pmjoyce
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/04/11/world/europe/uk-london-brexit.html?_r=0
======
socrates1998
I am not so sure that Brexit will have such a negative impact on Europe (and
the world).

I don't like the idea of these Super National organizations that politically
and economically integrate people so tightly.

Really it's more about having our global society so tightly integrated and
efficient. It means power (economic and political) goes to a select few people
who get better and better at holding on to it.

These crazy large banks that are so freaking tightly integrated are the worse
example. A crisis at one bank triggers a global meltdown. We don't want a
global meltdown so we bail out the banks, making them bigger and more
powerful, exacerbating the problem.

The more tightly controlled everything is makes our system so fragile.

If the UK is more separated economically from Europe, if one or the other has
an economic crisis the separation will lead to less drastic economic crisis.

~~~
voidz
This is a well formed opinion. It shouldn't be downvoted; if people disagree
there are better ways to express that than by downvoting it to fade out.

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mangecoeur
This article does a great job at capturing the mood in London. I think a lot
of Londoners feel a kind of betrayal - when Brexiteers talk about 'reclaiming'
the country, to diverse Londoners that means 'reclaiming' it _from them_.
There is no doubt that people are feel targeted and alienated by this kind of
discourse - and this very much includes EU citizens who have been witnessing
the rhetoric with increasing concern.

I particularly dislike the arrogance of the uniquely British 'reassurances'
given to skilled non-UK citizens with regards to this anti-immigrant rhetoric,
which goes something like "Oh when we talk about throwing out the filthy
immigrants, we don't mean YOU - so long as we find you useful". I mean, geez,
thanks I guess it's just friends and family who'll get forcibly deported then,
nothing to worry about.

In general there appears to be a (possibly wilful) lack of appreciation among
the Brexit crowd that when you say horrible things about the Europeans and
immigrants, those people can actually hear you. I'm not sure how they expect
to build an 'open trading nation' while becoming known as the country that
calls foreigners scum.

~~~
mrec
Is it really Leavers saying that, though? Or is it Remainers telling everyone
that Leavers are saying that as a way of trying to make Leavers look bad?

Obviously, as with anything in reality, it's a bit of both. But polls both
before and after the referendum consistently showed that immigration was _not_
the primary concern motivating Leave voters, support for immigration in
general is still very high across the board (well into the 80s IIRC, and ISTR
the most recent poll I saw showed only about a 1% gap in support for it
between Leave and Remain voters), and support for all existing EU residents
being able to stay after Brexit is near-as-dammit universal. The only reason
that hasn't been officially confirmed already is that the EU refused to
reciprocate for UK citizens living in the rEU until the Article 50
notification had happened.

I understand that a lot of people are anxious, and I hope things get cleared
up soon to remove that anxiety, but the people continually screaming that
Brexiteers hate immigrants and want to throw them out, against all evidence to
the contrary, are not really helping matters.

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redsummer
London will fall just like Switzerland, Norway and Iceland have collapsed
because they are not in the EU. The UK will become like Somalia.

No wait, actually those 3 countries are in the top 5 countries to live in the
world. Why do people wish for apocalypses?

~~~
timeSl
All 3 of those countries are still in the single European market though, with
freedom of movement. Given UK appears to be heading towards a hard brexit and
doesn't seem to want freedom of movement I think comparing them directly is a
bit disingenuous​.

~~~
digi_owl
And plenty of Norwegians would love to see the nation exit that market,
because they are, much like most that voted for brexit, tired of seeing
industry jobs being "offshored" and remaining wages being undercut by
temporary workers from the former eastern block.

At the hight of the oil boom a local shipyard was 1/3 Poles, brought in by the
busload. Some of them didn't have the first clue about English, never mind
Norwegian.

For all the "champagne left's" kumbaya about EU being about European peace and
solidarity, most of the working class see it as a way for the economic "elite"
to defang unions and force down wages.

~~~
mangecoeur
I find this argument mind-boggling when the people who have done the most to
undermine workers rights are _exactly the same_ people who support Brexit.

In the UK, one shocking source of work insecurity is the zero-hours contract
(basically, you have no guaranteed income but have to be available whenever
your employer feels like it). The EU has _nothing_ to do with that, in fact
most EU countries have banned the practise [1] but the British government
refuse to do anything it in the name of 'labour flexibility'.

These same people are now claiming that leaving the EU, which offers important
protections to workers rights through the treaties and the European Court of
Human Rights, will magically solve problems they created and sustain
themselves.

[1] [https://fullfact.org/law/zero-hours-contracts-uk-
europe/](https://fullfact.org/law/zero-hours-contracts-uk-europe/)

~~~
coldtea
> _I find this argument mind-boggling when the people who have done the most
> to undermine workers rights are exactly the same people who support Brexit._

The people against Brexit were all major political parties that ruled for 50+
years, all mainstream press, all businesses, the financial sector.

The deep establishment, in other words, that is, precisely those who have done
the most to undermine workers rights.

> _but the British government refuse to do anything it in the name of 'labour
> flexibility'._

Yes, but the British government was all for bremain. So who are those people
you were referring to?

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sambe
Lots of people commenting to say "of course not, article is stupid". Ignoring
the fact that the article doesn't really say it will, that view seems
unnecessarily dismissive. At the very least, finance is massively important to
London and many firms are considering their options. Of course, we don't know
yet how that will play out.

Having recently moved back after 10 years, the country seems massively behind
the times in most ways. Everything is slower and less efficient than in
Europe; more bureaucratic, worse technology & infrastructure. Half the service
at twice the price and takes three weeks to do anything. I don't feel farming
subsidies are going to cut it going forward.

~~~
Boothroid
Depends on which part of Europe you are talking about. Europe is huge and
diverse - kind of like the UK. Apart from your personal view, I doubt you can
find the facts to back up your assertions. Example: France is famously mired
in bureaucracy, with law that discourages scaling up a business beyond a
certain size due to the tower of rules and regulations you have to comply with
beyond that size. Another example: Crossrail, one of if not the largest
infrastructure project in Europe just now, and it's in the UK.

Takes three weeks to do anything? BT are crap, granted, but Amazon Prime takes
care of many things I need the next day, and apart from getting a mortgage
banking is pretty swift these days. Healthcare? I call the doctor and get a
triage callback the same day, and often an appointment the same day, with
nothing paid. I remember telling colleagues in the Netherlands that we paid
nothing, which punctured their idea of superiority a little given their
compulsory health insurance charges, plus extra per visit costs.

You're not the only one that's lived abroad.

~~~
sambe
The places I've lived. Not just BT; literally every company I've dealt with
since getting back has been somehow ragingly incompetent. How about a welcome
letter with account number asking you to sign up online, followed by support
call saying that won't actually work because it takes 10 business days to move
your details from one computer to another?

The Netherlands is one such country: not perfect but vastly better -
definitely including the health service. You certainly don't pay nothing for
the NHS.

------
cylinder
If the EU citizens wanted security of living in London for as long as they
want, why not apply for permanent residency after five years and then
citizenship? Doesn't seem like that big of an obstacle.

Why is London the only prosperous city in England? Does that seem right?
Germany has many prosperous cities.

And what is it that makes London a world capital so much more than Paris or
Frankfurt? Perhaps it is due to something uniquely British? If so, perhaps
that's worth preserving.

As someone living for years in one of these "global cities," they are all
hype. They are modern feudal estates. Look at the mentality of so many of
these expats who come into London... For example, the French. Do they treasure
British traditions? Doubtful. They want to make their money and resume and go
back home as soon as it's feasible. They want to stick to their own enclaves
in London. Does anyone else find this odd and unappealing from both sides?

How did London become a global capital? Mostly money laundering for the world.
They call it finance, but it's really just banking (not a lot of PE or hedge
funds), which is really just money laundering when you talk about the top end
of that industry. Screw banking and finance, every city they dominate ends up
sucking. Leave and we can build a city based on something real.

I just saw this in Sydney too. Everyone openly says, the (white) Aussies have
sold their property and bailed out to regional towns or what not.

It seems abnormal because what all the immigrants were chasing was the place,
culture and system those people built.

------
olivermarks
This is an awful piece of pro globalist propaganda IMO. Good job the online
format makes it so hard to read.

The EU is totally undemocratic with 7 unelected presidents imposing layers of
bureaucracy and regulation on everyone within the eurozone. It has failed to
reform and modernize, a key reason why the UK elected to leave in the
referendum.

Meanwhile Wall Street is locked in combat with the City of London, hence the
'poor old London the loser/ has been tone' of this article. 'Will London
Fall?' etc

The reality is that the City of London is an entirely separate sovereign state
within England, and is also one of the largest offshore tax havens on the
planet. (This also urgently needs reform).
[https://www.ft.com/content/7c8f24fa-3aa5-11e4-bd08-00144feab...](https://www.ft.com/content/7c8f24fa-3aa5-11e4-bd08-00144feabdc0)

As such it is highly unlikely that anything will change around London's global
dominance financially..

I am all for integration of the peoples of europe, but on their own terms and
wellbeing, not as chattels of a large globalist financial entity. Greece,
Portugal, Spain and Ireland have all been badly damaged by the EU. We need a
more equitable system that is about the people and not profits...

~~~
Boothroid
Spot on.

------
Boothroid
So much FUD it's difficult to know where to start! Just a few observations:

1\. Londoners are said to be more open-minded, but there's been plenty of
narrow-minded sneering about Brexit supporters from Remainers

2\. There is a deliberately false picture being portrayed that no immigration
will be permitted after Brexit. On the contrary - it's just that the UK will
be able to exercise sovereignty over its borders once again. Nothing about
that means the drawbridge is being pulled up

3\. No one makes the same criticisms about isolation etc. from other places
that don't offer hundreds of millions of people the automatic right to move
to. Canada? Australia? You never hear the same bleating about these countries
skilled migrant programmes!!

4\. No one could have predicted what London would have looked like in future
even if we had stayed in the EU - let's not forget the EU has a good long list
of serious challenges on its plate

5\. 'You can't live in an island and call it your oasis' said Shirley Watkins,
83 - might just as well say the same about the detachment of Londoners from
the rest of the UK!

6\. Criticism of tabloid press over Brexit - let's not forget the almost
unanimous media, political, business and academic consensus that supported
remain, and the apocalyptic FUD saying things like the day after a leave vote
an immediate recession would start, etc. etc. In that context criticism of one
side hints at bias

7\. '..London is struggling so much now.'. Oh please.. Not from where I'm
standing. So the borders with the EU become a little firmer. As if there won't
still be millions of people interested in making the UK their home. Who's to
say we won't have a more interesting and diverse London with more migrants
from outside the EU?

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royka118
No, London will still be London. Why do people think that suddenly you might
have to apply for a visa people will stop wanting to come and live in London?

~~~
m_t
Probably because one of the reason people from the EU came to London and, in
general, the UK, was because you didn't need a visa.

Remove that possibility, then people will consider other places as well.

~~~
forgingahead
I highly doubt people keen on going to London would consider Brussels or
Frankfurt an acceptable substitute.

~~~
gpvos
Depends on where the jobs move to.

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rm445
So this article is about whether London will lose its multicultural appeal
after Brexit. Here's an observation about the nationalities of the people
cited. Quite a few Europeans, but also:

\- An Indian-British writer (Nikesh Shukla) who has compiled a set of essays
about nonwhite Britons. (In case it isn't obvious, most (all?) European
countries are mostly white and the countries that are mostly nonwhite are not
in Europe).

\- Russian house-buyers.

\- A Canadian who wrote a book about London.

\- London's Pakistani-British mayor.

\- A Brazilian hairdresser.

\- A Japanese sculptor.

\- Jewish refugees from European persecution a hundred years before Britain
joined the EU.

\- An Indian food entrepeneur.

\- Somali immigrants at the doctor's surgery.

\- The Bangladeshi-born mayor of Tower Hamlets.

\- Bangladeshi muslims at Brick Lane Mosque.

Excellent people, no doubt, and worthy contributors to the life of the capital
(even the Russian oligarchs). The point is that they don't seem to owe their
position to EU membership.

It's interesting, the opening lines of the article say 'after the "Brexit"
referendum, its future as an international crossroads is far from certain'.
But the sources make it seem like London's multiculturalism doesn't owe that
much to the EU in the first place.

~~~
a_name
The Bangladeshi-born mayor of Tower Hamlets

Not an excellent person.

"An east London mayor has been removed from office and a poll declared void
after he was found guilty of electoral fraud."

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-
london-32428648](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-32428648)

Current mayor is John Biggs.

------
wyldfire
I sympathize that folks don't like the format how this story is presented. I
don't think I am quite as irritated but I do not prefer all this activity
while I scroll.

I think it's great that NYT is experimenting new ways to capitalize on this
medium and not merely just publishing their print stories on the web.

...but it's probably best for them to learn from this experiment and not
repeat it.

------
muninn_
Will we ever have titles that aren't clickbait?

Nicely designed site/story. But to put it simply: no.

There's simply no reason that London will "fall". Yes the immigration with the
EU will cause problems, and yes they will lose a lot of financial industry
business but London will continue to exist, and prosper. People will still
immigrate to the UK, and people will still live in London. The strength of the
city lies not solely as it relates to the EU, but because it is the capitol,
and largest city of a long and storied nation that is largely prosperous and
innovative.

I really wish we'd stop this whole Brexit == UK falls into the sea forever
nonsense. Economic problems? Maybe. But prosperous people are innovative and
responsive to change. Immigration is not the sole contributor to economic
growth or innovation. If it was, than China, Japan, and many other countries
would still be subsistence farming.

~~~
omurphyevans
It's not saying that. It's pointing our how London is very much the emblem of
a modern, integrated, multicultural city, and this is bound to change.

It doesn't say it'll fall into the sea. It wonders how such a city might
change, most likely in directions opposed to its current identity.

~~~
muninn_
Why is that considered "fall" then?

~~~
barrkel
The idea I had of London as a place I could live for decades when I first
moved here: that's starting to fade away. That's the fall. And it's not just
me; it's lots of other EU citizens.

~~~
muninn_
Yea but that doesn't mean London "will fall".

~~~
Arizhel
Stop being so literal. Rome is still there, and has been for 2000+ years. It
just isn't a terribly important city any more, globally; London will be
similar.

~~~
muninn_
I'm not being literal. London will continue to be an important global city.
There won't be any "fall".

~~~
Arizhel
I'm sure the Romans thought that too, and the Athenians before them, and the
Babylonians before that.

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markbnj
London has been a "world capitol" ... meaning I guess that it has deserved
that description as much as any other large city ... since at least the
mid-17th century. Whatever affect brexit has on the UK economy and place in
the European sphere I doubt it will fundamentally alter London's status.

------
chvid
London has fallen. Is falling. Slowly thru a century.

As the focal point for economic activity of the planet moved from Europe to
North America and eventually will move to China.

Brexit has got nothing to do with it; there are much larger forces at play.

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branchless
Right at the end:

"She pays $750 a month for a room on the edge of the city with seven
roommates".

Financialisation of housing is killing the UK. Work has no real meaning
because value created is unrelated to fiat money appropriated. The divide
between have and have not is massive. Immigration is being used to prop up
demand for housing as nobody can pay for a small apartment any more so people
live 8 to a small house.

~~~
sprafa
You're right but HN hive mind is destroying you.

~~~
branchless
It's the worst site on the internet for economics. The mixture of econ 101 and
smug closed-mindedness from success in other fields is hard to beat.

------
wehadfun
Stupid article. London has survived a couple world wars, invasions,
depressions.

~~~
Arizhel
So has Rome. But Rome isn't exactly a globally-important city any more.

------
k__
I hope so.

The UK has brought the world much pain, sadly there is no omnipresent
compensation, like Karma, that make things right again.

The only fear I have is that people will now flock to Berlin and gentrify the
hell out of it. Shame.

------
krona
They asked the same question in 2008.

------
shitgoose
web site design is moronic. i couldn't get past the second paragraph. who in
their mind designed and approved it???

~~~
amiga-workbench
Reader mode is essential on the modern web, everything has a crap signal to
noise ratio.

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tomtheelder
I honestly tried to read this but couldn't get past the format. The rapid
changes of background/text when scrolling were incredibly jarring. This felt
like a regular long form article made into an "interactive" (in quotes because
there is no actual interaction) for the sake of it.

Maybe this isn't a productive comment but the format ruined the article for
me.

~~~
syntaxing
IF you're on desktop, I highly recommend using the reader view feature built
into Firefox. Makes most of my reading experience so much better for most
sites.

~~~
coldpie
Thank you. This made it readable.

It's actually surprisingly readable in the source code, which is what I was
about to do before I read your comment.

------
demonshalo
I am unable to read this on mobile. Can anyone tl;dr plz?

~~~
filoleg
Londoners voted against Brexit, yet Brexit happened. London will be in ruins
now as a world capital, surely.

That's quite literally the summary, if you normalize for all the musings and
feel-good details.

~~~
trendia
A careful reading of this article will show that the authore made absolutely
_zero_ objective, measurable predictions. e.g. the author doesn't say that the
banking system will fail, or the stock market will crash, or that average
incomes will fall relative to their continental counterparts.

~~~
barrkel
However, the mood of the piece accurately captured my ambivalence about
continuing to live in London.

I bought a house just before the election, but I'm finding it extremely hard
to justify investing much in it because I can't really see a future for me in
this country, if it continues to trend.

It's not about plummeting stock markets or failing banking systems. It's about
living with the uncertainty as to whether I'll still be welcome as a non-
citizen. The moment the UK state starts to vary treatment on important things
like entitlements or tax rates, I'm out of here - I'm not like some cow to be
milked for the benefit of the natives.

I reckon I'm 6 to 18 months away from leaving for someplace else.

------
Dekken
your site is bad and you should feel bad

