From 84 Charing Cross to Mickey D’s: It’s Worse than Spengler Thought

This is London. I am seated in the cafetería at Marks and Spencer. My life is not at risk. I expect no sympathy. I expect even fewer readers. Vox clamans in deserto or no, it is Christmas season in a world capital. And not just any world capital. As Ed Murrow would say, “This is London.” His circumstances in 1940 and 1941 were considerably more fraught. Murrow risked his life at the hands of Goering’s bombers during the Blitz. I risk only getting chewed out by waitstaff who think my seat could be put to more productive use. They are, in fact, from their perspective, correct. My situation is, in fact, quite pleasant.

But the world is a mess. And even though all dressed up for Christmas, London is basically a tart. There is so much Russian money here that London has been called Londongrad. Money laundering run by Russians is a huge business. Property ownership in the UK by Russians has been conservatively estimated at over a billion pounds sterling. Some courier got busted with over 250 thousand pounds in cash in his car the other day, for God’s sake. And the evidence is everywhere. Westminster and the shopping districts are literally gleaming from rehab. There is construction activity all over London—it looks like Austin, Texas during the boom. New tunnels. New terminals. Consumer stores—top of the line—crowd the major streets—Oxford, Bond, Regent. And full of merchandise at eye-watering prices, jammed with polyglot crowds of tourists. Glitz galore. Walking through Westminster at night is an almost unending sensory overload of lights, displays, Christmas trees, shimmering blondes in designer clothes. I have been in uber rides in Teslas, Mercedes and, for God’s sake, a black Jaguar. And yet, you know beauty is only skin deep, and much of Britain is in trouble. Something like a quarter of London families cannot make ends meet. The National Health Service is in deep trouble, moribund if you like. 84 Charing Cross, already a loss to bibliophiles a half century ago, is now ignominiously reduced to a Mickey D’s. The World According to Donald Trump.

The reason why London seems like so much of the problem is because London is so much of the problem. The Financial Times’s chief data reporter, John Burn-Murdoch, recently highlighted how the UK compares on per-capita economic performance once London is removed. The answer? Worse than Mississippi, the US’s worst-performing state, because “removing London’s output and headcount would shave 14% off British living standards”. A Mickey-Mouse number? Sure. But it does give an outsider some sense of the God-awful in-your-facedness of at least parts of London. Basically, it had been 20 years since I last saw this place. It might as well have been a century. Talk about “rebranding.” The characteristic reserve of the British is well and truly gone. Brutish? Maybe. British? Not quite.

And the cause of all this? Well, I haven’t really been paying close attention for the intervening decades. Simon Wren-Lewis dates the decline part of things to not simply to Brexit in 2016, but more importantly, to the Tory government/’s reliance on austerity beginning in 2010. https://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2022/05/how-austerity-created-brexit-and.html. In a sense, this ought to be a warning to USAmericans, because this little drama is coming your way courtesy of Trump, Musk and the rest of the idiots that my compatriots have chosen to entrust their fate to. We are headed down the same road, eyes wide shut, so check your pulse now if you are in the USA. You may not be able (or want to) in 18 to 24 months. Of course, Brexit itself was simply stupidity on steroids, particularly in light of Britain’s never adopting the Euro. I am still trying to figure out the logic behind what the Brits did in 2016, but I am also fully occupied trying to figure out what the Hell we have done in 2024. So knock yourself out. The next few years may be better experienced in a state of diminished consciousness anyway.

Of course, the thing I have mostly noticed is the transformation of (at least parts) of London into something that must be Donald Trump’s wet dream, a Palace of Laundered Money and Oligarchs, and that is not Brexit. It is my impression that the Tories decided that whoring out Britain was the most sensible way to profit from the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the failure of a democratic transition to stick under Boris Yeltsin in Russia. I only know what I can read about this, but there is plenty. Get a hold of Oliver Bullough’s Butler to the World (2022) if you have a strong stomach and start there. Again, maybe, just maybe, you’re in for a sneak peek on what’s going to happen in the Homeland under Trump and Tulsi, God forbid. Yeah, we have “guardrails.” (personally, I think of them as third rails, but that’s just me). In any event, the penetration of Russian influence and the looting of the former Soviet economy have transformed London. I can’t say that I much like it, but, Hell, it’s not my country and certainly not my favorite city anymore. Tant Pis. Anyway, if you like gauche, over-the-top commercial, and tasteless, you’ll like what some of London has become. Sorry, it isn’t for me. I preferred the old post-imperial sort of vaguely Cool Britannia version that people like Roy Jenkins and Ken Clarke presided over. No accounting for taste, I guess.

Ah, yes, one other thing. London’s traffic, congestion charge or no, is dreadful. Because the Tube was loused up (not unusual), an Uber out to Kew from our hotel on the West End (another experience, to be sure) took the better part of an hour in late morning. This was to get out to what I still call the PRO, but which the Brits insist on calling the National Archive. It was a very fruitful trip and the staff at the PRO are wonderfully helpful and blissfully reasonable about using cantankerous old Chancery Court rolls, stuff that I suspect would now require an armed guard in the Archivo General de la Nacion in Mexico (and gloves–and a mask–and….and….and….). But now I know I had damn well better look for lodging a lot closer to Kew for when I go back–and I will go back, since I know that further treasures of the Lizardi Boys will turn up (hint, hint–the firm’s books taken in bankruptcy?).

The people at the National Portrait Gallery archive were similarly helpful, so maybe in all this mess, the fellowship of the book and scholarship will see us through. Pretty to think so, right?

Memo to whoever is running London. Better raise the congestion charge. If what you got is equilibrium, I’d hate to see what happens on a bad day. Talk about excess demand.

And I am no longer sitting at M&S. But if I close with “This is San Antonio,” no one is likely to give a damn.