London is no longer an English city

[Leafyhouse]

Said by John Cleese (he of Monty Python fame), recently. Link to story is here:

www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-48451384

What do other people think? I do see London's diversity as being its great strength, but maybe it's just because I live in the London bubble - and maybe the view from the rest of the country is utter horror that the capital seems to be becoming increasingly disconnected from the country. Both economically and culturally. Hence the Brexit vote - Remain in a sea of Leave.

What's the view from others?

why are people calling Charles racist? I'm confused.

I've got to go to work now and I have a feeling this thread will be gone by the time I can revisit it so I will probably never know.!

Curious that if Brexit was never about racism, this thread should be relegated to the "Brexit" forum, as it seems to have little to do with Brexit

Maybe they’re projecting Rosa?
They’ve obviously got nothing to back up their accusations.

This thread took a bizarre turn

John Cleese was saying two things. One was in words and probably accurate. The other was implied and is downright nasty. If he doesn't want people to start assuming he's a racist, he needs to choose his words more carefully.

Probably accurate? Not sure about that.

John Cleese is the same age as my parents, so if he lived in London as a young adult he'd have seen waves of immigration from the Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent. Those people and their children are now mostly British citizens of course.

Immigration in London has changed (more Europeans) but London has always been a major beneficiary of immigration. When I was at an inner London secondary school in the 1970s, I would estimate that at least half of my year group had parents or grandparents who were born outside the U.K.

The immigration in the 1970s didn’t come from India. It came from British territories abroad. It’s why those immigrants have become a lot more successful and merged more into British society than those who came from India later. There were similar cultures etc.

Curious that if Brexit was never about racism, this thread should be relegated to the "Brexit" forum, as it seems to have little to do with Brexit

Well, it's coming from an angle of 'London in a post-Brexit world'. Is the rest of the UK going to turn against London, blame it for all the problems, or see it as an asset to help? Curbing immigration will hit London harder than any other region IMHO, but if London's the source of all evil, its voice will be drowned out. And that won't help the rest of the country - and yes, I do agree with massive infrastructure investment in the rest of the UK. But don't blame London for the state (better or worse) that we're in.

John Cleese is the same age as my parents, so if he lived in London as a young adult he'd have seen waves of immigration from the Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent.

John Cleese was born in Weston Super Mare, bought up in the West Country, and went to Cambridge. His first time living in London was as a post graduate 21-year old who moved in circles where he'd never see "immigrants" of any stripe - merely ex-colonial ex-pats (as he has become in reverse).

To me, it feels like a British city, not an English one. I don’t think John Cleese was wrong, but I’m not sure he was offensive either
It has that mix of British influence and a melting pot of people. When my friends come from Canada or the US , they see London as a totally difference experience to “England”, which it is.

Londinium: Founded by the Romans

But what did they ever do for us?

I haven’t travelled the world by any means, but I’ve been to Paris, Rome, Madrid & Washington, & I can honestly say I’ve always felt that I’m in the country I’m in.
Paris feels very French.
I’m just trying to see it from a tourists point of view. Do tourists expect London to be full of people talking like the queen?
Maybe they do?

As someone who has lived in other countries London’s identity as an English, actually British, city is very strong. It has always been diverse with waves of immigrants throughout history. The East end would not have had that cockney identity without French Huguenot and Jewish refugees. It was the French Huguenots who bought us fish and chips! It is far more akin to Manchester and Leeds than it is to Paris or Hong Kong.... And those cities too oWe their characters to immigration.

I don’t understand why this is under Brexit. If there is an issue of resentment towards London from the rest of the country it is because Thatcher reengineered the economy away from industries that could no longer compete with competition from the rest of the world towards the service industries and science and tech where we could, and have, develop a competitive advantage that would make us world leaders. No successive government has done anything to share that economic expansion to the rest of the country. Cambridge is a clear example, no infrastructure to support all the biotech that has gravitated there when the north also has great understanding universities and with the right infrastructure could have attracted those companies and connected those in deprived communities to hubs of development.

Absolutely nothing to do with the EU who did fund regional infrastructure

Haven't read the full thread yet, but the man's an idiot. I grew up in London in the 1950s/1960s and lived there for decades afterwards. My best friend at infant school was a Chinese Girl. I also had a Jamaican friend and our church was full of West Indian and Ceylonese (as it was then) families. A frequent visitor to our house was a Hungarian (mate of my dad's) and we knew huge numbers of Irish. At secondary school my two best mates were a Greek and a Ugandan Asian. We also had a Yugoslavian, a Cypriot and two Italians in my class. Yes, I had 'English' friends, too, but the point is that London was not 'English' in the fifties/sixties/seventies either, when Cleese was hanging out at his Somerset/Bristol prep school/private school and Cambridge. He is talking out of his arse. The fact that he himself lives in a 'foreign' country makes him an idiot and a hypocrite.

’m just trying to see it from a tourists point of view. Do tourists expect London to be full of people talking like the queen?
Well some tourists have a very nostalgic view of London, and Londoners, they drive classic cars, and live in Georgian buildings,and always have cakes , scones and crumpets for tea everyday!! . They think all Londoners talk like Hugh grant and look like Colin Firth

And the so called flood of Eastern Europeans started in the 1940s. Ealing has always had Polish shops, they have served three or four generations of Polish families, it has always been part of Ealing's identity and schools like Gunnersbury have always had a large number of Polish pupils.

Equally Brixton would not be Brixton without its immigrant community. Ironically the hipsters would never have colonised Brixton, Shoreditch and Hoxton if it were not for their unique identities that are very much due to their immigrant past. I remember Jeanette Winterson was amongst the first to colonise the French Huguenot buildings in Shoreditch and restore their identity.....

Whilst we are talking about being "English", what is English? I am a northerner, I know exactly what that means, I have a painting of Salts Mill by David Hockney above my desk, that is distinctively Northern, nowt southern about it. But English? I don't identify with Morris Dancers who look really daft prefer fish and chips cooked in dripping -not rancid oil prefer moors and mountains to green and pleasant hills, and the Brontes to Dickens secret is out, I can't be doing with all that pathos-- so am I no longer English? I don't feel English. I feel northern first, British in the sense of the country on my passport and how I am perceived by the rest of the world (used to be liberal, humorous, articulate, intellectual, competent, now a self destructive international joke) and a citizen of the world......

@Manclife1

But half the population aren't "not British", they're "not white British". Being not white doesn't make you not English. Being British doesn't mean you are English

London is a global city witha large percentage of residents either born abroad or to parents that were. This doesn't matter at all. The bigger problem is that it's sucking the life out of the country, nearly all investment whether inward (from overseas), domestic or government goes into London and the commuter belt. Wages are being driven down elsewhere by companies headquartered in London who see their workers as commodities to extract wealth from. Transport spending is 10 x per capita in London than elsewhere, it's its self ridiculous (my city has hand me down buses from London because they can't afford new ones, they stop by 6.30pm so the only option is cars)

Isn't it awful when famous people talk drivel. Depends how you define English I suppose. London is the main city in England, so maybe London gets to define what being English is all about rather more than the provinces.

The rudest people I have ever encountered are at Birmingham New Street station. Repeatedly. When travelling with small children.

That's New Street for you. Take any major train station and people are rushing to get to where they are going and don't give a monkeys for anybody else regardless of race but New Street does seem more unpleasant than many - especially in it's old form when it was like entering the depths of the earth.

stucknoe But that is not the fault of the EU or the London mayor, it is the fault of successive governments. As I say upthread the biotech and other scientific industries were just crying out for the infrastructure to be put in around areas where the academic excellence was in place. That did not have to be London Oxford or Cambridge. It t could have been Manchester Leeds and Sheffield with a rail infrastructure that connected in places like Barnsley and Rotherham. Instead young scientists cannot afford to live in the places where there is work and go overseas and the industry that has cropped up around Oxford and Cambridge is connected by roads that are little better than farmtracks . Bad economic planning.

And all that investment has not benefitted many Londoners. 282 skyscrapers are going up approved by Boris (as well as the garden bridge that has sunk with his funding), many of them residential. They are built by Chinese property companies and when built many are dark at night because they are vehicles for often corruptly come by foreign investment. Meanwhile London has some of the worst rates of deprivation, families are being exiled from their communities and homelessness is exceeding the scale of Thatchers years. Of course high levels of deprivation and homelessness is now a feature of all English cities...

I don't know why people are talking about London voting remain. Plenty of UK cities voted remain. Liverpool was one and I think Leeds and Manchester did too.

London is hardly on it's own with regards to Brexit.