Why the hard right hate London

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0:39This is a Global Player original podcast. I didn't think it was possible to hate London any more than I did already, because it's such an unbelievable fit hole of a place. I'm here today on Oxford Street, where this is the state of Sadiq Khan's London. We've got a private business warning its customers and other shoppers here to keep the phones hidden because they're getting stolen all the time. Why is London such a hellhole at the moment, let's be honest? The social contract in London is under strain like never before. Now we know that knife crime has exploded in London. I think we're living in lawless London.

1:20London's just fallen to the point now where if you have money you have to hide it. It's crazy, London's completely lawless now. Among others, you heard there were Lawrence Fox, Nigel Farage and Andrew Tate trying to paint London as this dystopian hellhole where if you walk out of your front door, that is, if you haven't already been burgled, you're going to be mugged, you're going to be raped, you're going to be assaulted and you're going to have your phone stolen. London has problems. But why is the right trying to turn London into a metaphor for everything that is wrong? Has it anything to do with the city having a Muslim mayor?

2:05Welcome to the News Agents.

2:11The News Agents. It's John. And it's Lewis in San Francisco. Lucky you. So you're no longer in Vegas. You've abandoned Vegas. Unfortunately, the authorities made me leave, John. For reasons that are undisclosed, they made me leave. You know, I've come to San Francisco instead, the heart of the digital universe, to do more on this AI story. But the hotel's Wi-Fi is down. There's no power. So, you know, maybe actually, maybe actually, maybe the future is not all it's cracked up to be. Do you know what I mean? The future is bright. No, it's not. Look, we spoke about London on the podcast the other day.

2:47And dare to suggest that London may be an OK place to live. Complicated, with crime, with all sorts of problems. And the abuse that we got from the right, the far right, about daring to suggest that it wasn't hell on earth has made us kind of think, why is London being demonised in this way? and actually kind of in fairness to the people who've made these criticisms, do they have a point? Is London hell? Are we underplaying the scale of crime in the city? And we just wanted to today try to have a bit of a realistic appraisal conversation about the London that we live in. I think this is such an interesting phenomenon.

3:32We sort of touched on it earlier in the week. We were talking about it. To be honest, it was an in-passing comment for me in a sense because we were talking about Trump and we're talking about American politics and we were talking about why it is that Trump has chosen to deploy the National Guard to the street of Washington, D.C. And I was just making the point that, you know, this has been the political fight against the cities on the American cultural political right has been a sort of mainstay of American politics since the 1970s and late 1960s, since the days of Richard Nixon, invoking the spectre of the city as a form of lawlessness, of crime, often of racial tension, and the right using the city as a synonym often for all of the things they don't like in politics.

4:21And to be honest, often as a kind of veiled attack on ethnic minorities and so on. That hasn't been nearly as big a feature of British politics. It just hasn't been there. It's just not a kind of parallel to American politics we've had until really recently. And you have seen on the online right, the digital right, the terminally online right, as I prefer to call them, the constant invocation of our cities and London in particular, although any city and we can come back to this and the importance of it, any city in particular with a big Muslim population. But London in particular, as a kind of hellhole, hell on earth, dystopia, the way that the rest of the country will go if we're not careful and if we don't do the things that they want to do.

5:04And as soon as we just mentioned that in passing, I think it's been viewed a million and a half times, that clip. And like just the sheer venom that has come down on that. And I don't care and you don't care. You know, we don't care about these things in particular. I sort of take the view that if all of those sort of people are pissed off, you must be saying or doing something right. But I think that it is nonetheless an interesting phenomenon because it is not only something that we see from these sort of termly online accounts. We see it by mainstream right political figures, whether it's Robert Jenrick or Baden-Hackle or Farage.

5:33The invocation of London and going after Sadiq Khan in particular has become a sort of key sort of staple of their politics. I don't know about you, John, but I don't remember anything like it in British politics before. No. And I've got to declare an interest here. I'm a Londoner. I was born in Hammersmith. I grew up in the east end of London in Stepney off the Commercial Road. The flat we lived in was burgled twice in the 1960s, moved to North London. I was mugged outside Kentish Town tube station in 1975. I mean, look, crime has been a feature of London life forever. Cities have problems. There is no utopia on earth.

6:09I thought it was kind of interesting in 2012 when we hosted the Olympics and you had the Queen jumping out of a helicopter to parachute into the Olympic Stadium. And you had David Beckham going up the River Thames in a speedboat. And it was this sort of glorified Richard Curtis style view of London. I thought that was overdone, but nothing like as overdone as the dystopian hell we are being presented with now, as if London has suddenly in these past 13 years since 2012 become this terrible, terrible city to live in. London is a vibrant city with great theatres, with great cinemas, with great cultural life, with diversity and restaurants.

6:53You know, it's wonderful. It's got problems as well, like any city anywhere in the world. Yeah, let's just deal with the facts, right? First of all, before we can get onto the politics. Facts, Lewis. People don't want the facts. They want their prejudices. Well, indeed. So look, there is crime in London. There are crimes in every city in the world. It is a megacity. It is a global megacity. It is without doubt one of the greatest, if not greatest city in the world. It would be very peculiar if there weren't crime. It has always been there. Some measures of crime have got worse over the last couple of years.

7:27Yes, there is a big problem with phone theft. Yes, there is a problem with that sort of robbery that we haven't seen in the past. Other crimes, but when you compare them to 10, 20 years ago, have gone down, whether it's car theft or burglary or whatever it happens to be. And these things do shift and they do fluctuate. And I think there are also questions and problems which we talked about on the show many times. And I think liberalism ought not to shy away from this. Yes, there are some problems around integration. Yeah, there are problems in particular which we've seen play out in terms of sexual violence against women.

7:58These are problems which ought to be taken seriously. No one should shy away from them. We should look at them and think we should talk about them in a dispassionate way and think about how we're going to improve them. But the truth is these people are not interested in that. I think, John, half of the people that have been coming for us over the course of the last week and who constantly invoke this particular politics, most of them probably have never been to London or they haven't been to London recently. They certainly don't live there. I have been, it is quite interesting, astonishing in the last 24 hours, partly in response to that clip.

8:31Astonishing how many of these far-right accounts seem to have been mugged in the last 24 hours alone. Seems to have happened. Remarkable, that. Just remarkable that in the last 24 hours they've been walking around the streets of London and have been subject to personal muggery or whatever it happens to be. And the truth is, is that most of it is complete bollocks. Most of it is just nonsense. Most of it is a lie. Most of it is made up. Why do they do it is the interesting thing. And I think they do it because London, and not just London, but the big cities as well, it embodies the politics that they abhor.

9:02their entire shtick, their bullshit is predicated on the idea that multiculturalism, people from different backgrounds, contemporary liberalism if you like, all the things that have made up liberalism over the last 10, 20, 30 years, that if you have these things that it will inevitably lead to a sort of civil war, it will lead to social breakdown, that you have these people living side by side, it cannot happen and in particular they focus on Muslims. If you've got a lot of Muslims somewhere, it will just inevitably, inexorably, reflexively lead to a kind of civil breakdown. It doesn't. We, you and I both know we live in London.

9:40It doesn't. London is a thriving city, which has a huge economy, which contributes so much to the UK. And the fact that it doesn't, it means that London lives rent-free inside their head, because it is a living embodiment of how completely wrong they are in their politics every day of the week. So they have to slam it. They have to eviscerate it. They have to tell lies about it and all of our great cities as well. So I kind of sometimes wonder whether delete London, insert immigration, because that's exactly really you are talking about. It's like I want to make an amendment to this motion. London is a hellhole.

10:18Delete London, insert the word immigration instead. And it's being used as a sort of proxy for an anger about the way the country has become multicultural, multiracial. And for London, I remember growing up, which was the food in London was considered the worst you'd get anywhere in the world. I became the Paris correspondent. The food was way better in London than in Paris. There was much more variety. It was much more interesting because, of course, You have brought people in from around the world who've set up lives here, who created this melting pot of a city. Yeah. And with all the problems, I want to go back to Lewis, something you said a moment ago about the facts, because we've been sifting through the Office of National Statistics data.

11:04And if we were presenting it as the Premier League table, London is sort of mid table. There are areas where we're worse on some things. Muggings have gone up, for example, quite considerably. but sexual offences, London has recorded a rise less than the national average. You know, thefts, yeah, up 5%, but knife crime, down. Shoplifting, 20 % rise, you know, but drug offences, way worse in other parts of the UK compared to London. Weapons possession, London saw a 16 % drop in possession of weapons compared to the national decrease of just 1%. Hertfordshire, dangerous as Hertfordshire had a 35 % increase, closely followed by Daffod Powys in Wales with a 34 % increase.

11:52The mean streets of Welshpool, John. Exactly. Why is no one talking about Welshpool? You have to ask that question. And, you know, we can be glib and flippant about it. But realistically, guys, what is your problem? London is complicated. London has seen a rise in certain sorts of crimes and a fall in other sorts of crimes. But when you try to present the City as Lewis the other day when we were talking about this you referred to Gotham City you feel that sort of Robert Jenrick has taken on the role of Batman as the Cape Crusader who's going to stop the crime and stop all the decadence and decay look you know all sorts of cities the history is that there were gangs you know 1960s London where I grew up East London you know the Cray Twins weren't that nice they were kind of controlling large chunks at the east end of London the The Richardsons were in South London.

12:44They also weren't that nice. Have there been problems in London for a very long time and other cities? Yes, of course they have. Is it measurably and immeasurably worse now? I'm just not convinced. No, because you're right not to be convinced, John, because in so many ways it's not. London is a great city. I'll tell you this. If all these people don't like London, all right. And they think it's a hellhole. Here's a little experiment we can do. Well, we'll let London just keep all of the tax revenues that it generates. It won't send it anywhere else in the United Kingdom. London will just keep it.

13:16Let's see how people like that. Because the truth is, is that not just London again, our great cities, they are the dynamos of the economy. They are the thing that generate the majority of the tax receipts that actually subsidise. I don't really like that word. It's not really a subsidy in that sense. But they certainly, there are significant transfers of wealth, of income to other parts of the country. London also gets a lot of investment, right, and so on. But let's see how we like it if those cities are taken away. The truth is, is that the reason the cultural right are coming for London and other cities like it is because they abhor its politics.

13:50They do not like the fact that so many people of different races live together harmoniously. They don't like the fact there are so many gay people in the big cities. They don't like the fact that there is a cultural liberalism which is at the centre of the politics of these cities. And so they just have to make things up about it. They just have to make things up about it and invoke things which don't exist. That is not to say, again, that there aren't problems. But the problems actually that there are in cities like London, they don't want to talk about. What's London's biggest problem? It's not the fact that it's about to break down into complete civil disorder.

14:24It's housing. It's the fact that people who are born in London or moved to London can't afford somewhere decent to live. It's the fact that over years, and it is true to say that some of the basic infrastructure of our big cities, the kind of the sort of lived experience being in these cities has decayed in many areas because of a lack of public investment of years and years of these cities not being looked after properly. So, yeah, there are problems with our cities, but it is not the problems or they're not the problems that these people want to talk about because these people have absolutely nothing of interest to say about any of these things.

14:59They would rather rail against ghosts and phantoms, imagined cultural enemies, because that is what their politics is. They have nothing to say about the day to day lived experience of ordinary people living in these cities who do want answers for why parts of their cities or things in their cities are declining. But it's declining not for the reasons that these people say. The other thing to say about that is, you know, yeah, of course, if you come and live in London, it's really expensive and you need to have a decent wage. Why? Because London is in demand. if there was no demand to live in London if people didn't want to come to the city if jobs weren't here in the city if it wasn't the centre of all sorts of you know brilliant vibrant industries then people would stay away and they wouldn't want to come to London and of course because so many people come here from around the world we're not talking about people on small boats we're talking on people on jets coming in from the states to work in the city of London or from anywhere in Europe because it's such a vibrant financial centre one of the great financial centres of the world, that is driving up prices.

16:03And yeah, there are challenges there in terms of affordable housing and all the rest of it. But London is a place where people want to come from around the world. And we should be celebrating this capital, not just decrying it as a knee flex reaction to the fact that there are some Muslims who live here and the mayor happens to be Muslim as well. And I do think that there is something that is pretty racist at the heart of this. Oh, John, without doubt. I mean, the people who are generating or pushing the direction of sort of the politics of the right online, the online right, they're completely racist.

16:39They're completely xenophobic. Anybody who's been on X recently can see that. Look at the things that, don't take my word for it. Take what Ben Abisjekti, who's a conservative MP, new conservative MP, has been saying or tweeting. Go and look at his account over the last 24 hours or so. the stuff that he's getting from these accounts conservative MP is beyond the pale he's been charting and talking about how the Overton window something we talk about a lot the parameters of what is acceptable in politics of what is acceptable say is not just shifting it is galloping and it is galloping in a direction which is undoubtedly undoubtedly racist you mentioned Khan and I do think that that is important one of the reasons not the only reason but it is without doubt Now, one of the reasons London occupies this place, as I say, rent-free in the heads of the sort of online cultural right is because Khan is a Muslim and he's a Muslim mayor.

17:31That's got a long pedigree as well. You know, the fight between or the sort of the ongoing feud and conflict between Trump and Khan, undoubtedly, there is an element of it being a Muslim. And, you know, the sort of online discourse, which is that Khan is leading to the Islamification of London, all of this sort of stuff. It's prevalent, it's virulent, it's ubiquitous, it's everywhere. And for my part, what I think needs to happen far more is people, mainstream politicians, media, calling this stuff out. Calling this stuff out because it's not just stuff that happens on X. It's easy to go, oh these are just bot accounts.

18:03Honestly, these accounts have got millions and millions of followers. The things they are saying are being seen millions and millions and millions of times. And whether people agree with it when they see it or not initially, there is no doubt that it shifts the perception of politics. It shifts that Overton window that I've just talked about. It changes the tenor of politics in a substantial way. And there has got to be a counter reaction to this stuff. It can't just be dismissed as sort of the musings of just insignificant people. They are insignificant people. They're certainly stupid people, but they're influential people.

18:36And I think that mainstream political forces, whatever you want to call it, progressive politics, left of politics, centrist politics, whatever you want to call it, I've got to start taking it seriously because the city stuff. Yeah, it's important, but it is just a cipher for a wider shift which is going on in politics, which is deeply, deeply sinister. You know, I don't want to seem like I'm sitting here as a sort of spokesperson for Sadiq Khan. I think Sadiq Khan has done some good things. I think he's done some lousy things in London. He's an elected politician where he's not going to keep everyone happy.

19:06And I've kind of expressed at various times on this podcast the things I think, oh, God, what are you doing to London over this and that and some of the things that are happening? But why don't we talk about Andy Burnham in anything like the same way? Does anyone ever say bloody hell, Andy Burnham? I mean, Donald Trump doesn't talk about Andy Burnham. I don't think Nigel Farage talks much about Andy Burnham. I don't think, you know, any of the others. Lawrence Fox talks about Andy Burnham. But the online right love to talk about Sadiq Khan. What is the difference between Sadiq Khan and E Burnham?

19:39Right, from one city to another, I'm here in San Francisco. We've been working on these AI stories all week. And when we come back, we're just going to bring you a conversation that I had with someone. Well, it blew my mind. So I think it might blow yours as well. And it is about how AI can and probably will reshape something as fundamental to the human condition as death itself. Stay with us.

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21:30California resident loans made or arranged pursuant to a California finance law license and MLS number 1353190. Klarna balance account required to be eligible for cashback points. Limitations, terms and conditions apply. This is The News Agents. Right, so as I say, we've been on the West Coast of America all of this week working on a couple of different stories. One of them is this wider piece, documentary piece, we're going to bring you in the next couple of weeks. about AI and how it is on the cusp of transforming so many elements of our life. I know in some ways that sounds familiar, but for my money, I don't think we have properly, in a political way, engaged with that transformation.

22:09And we often think that this is something that's maybe coming in three years or five years or 10 years. It's not. It's happening right now. So that's coming. But we were at a conference. It's the world's biggest AI conference. That's why we were in Las Vegas obviously there's the blackjack as well but main reason we're in Las Vegas was this conference called AI4 and there was this huge exhibition hall full of different companies and exhibitors trying to flog their wares including not least bizarrely robotic dogs it was like kind of deeply deeply black mirror going from sort of one stall to the next and hearing about the different things they're doing but one in particular really stayed with us and it was this company called Reflector and it was a company that is promising to basically bring your dead relatives back to life.

22:52It would input their data and you will be able to talk to your dead relatives as much as you want for a monthly subscription. This is the conversation I had with one of the senior people at that company about what they're offering and about how it might transform death itself. Yeah, my name is Greg Matusky. I'm one of the founders of Reflector. And tell us about Reflector. What is it? It's a very unique platform that lets anybody virtualize someone from their past that they love and cherish. It's a way for families to capture and document stories from the past and share them with future generations.

23:28What you do is you load in information about the individual and then conversationally or through text, you can train the model. You give a fingerprint of the voice, and then you can start interacting with it, talking back and forth. Like my father, World War II veteran, he's virtualized, and I can talk to him about his experiences in World War II, the stories he's told me for years that now my children and grandchildren can hear from his mouth. Let me get this straight, Greg. So you can input sufficient data into your program, which will allow people to communicate in a sense with their relatives who have long since died.

24:05Yes. So you put enough information in, it prompts you. And then you can conversationally tell it more information over time in the biographer. And it virtualizes that person in their voice. And you can do this through text or you can do this through voice into the model. And then you can have a conversation. You could ask it, Dad, what would you think of AI in 2025, which he passed away in 2005? So it's a unique way to capture stories, but also to stay connected and receive advice from those who you find important in your life. It sounds like pure science fiction. It is pure science fiction. It's all here because of AI and its ability to tell stories and work with human beings to capture past events and histories and family legacies.

24:51Is there not a bit of a profound danger with it, though, Greg? I mean, in a sense that once people have died, I mean, to die is a fundamental part of the human condition. To grieve and to lose is part of the human condition. And you could basically be in a position where you're persuading people that they're talking to their dead relatives, but they're not. It's a fiction. It's a phantom. It doesn't really exist. It's a machine. I speak with my dead relatives all the time. I look to them for advice. And this is a way... It's not them. It's not them, but it is their stories and legacies. It's their experiences, which are floated to the surface for me.