Just why do the Conservatives so dislike London? The former deputy chair of the Tory party Lee Anderson recently described the capital’s Labour mayor, Sadiq Khan, as controlled by “Islamists” – a sentiment others in his party rather belatedly accept as “wrong”, even if they won’t say why. Paul Scully, a former minister for London, chipped in with his belief that parts of the city, and of Birmingham, are now “no-go areas”. The previous prime minister Liz Truss lambasted an “anti-growth coalition” incessantly cabbing from their “north London townhouses to the BBC studios”. Rishi Sunak marked his first ever prime minister’s questions by attacking Labour’s Keir Starmer as a leader who “rarely leaves north London”.
Put these statements together and it appears that, in the collective mind of the post-Brexit Tory party, London has become synonymous with all that ails modern Britain. It is either bursting with woke liberal darlings – Guardian-reading tofu eaters, to coin a phrase – backslapping each other over their latest panel show, or it is chockful of mullahs who detest British liberalism and want the country under sharia law.
