Everyone loves to argue about London. Depending on who you ask, the capital is either a success story of multiculturalism and tolerance, with comparatively low crime, or a poorly policed and litter-strewn hellscape, increasingly unsafe and ethnically divided, with an ongoing housing crisis.

Reform UK has now found a new angle on this discourse, suggesting that some of the outer boroughs could be offered a vote on leaving London. The return of Havering to Essex, of which it was a part until 1965, was mooted by Reform MP Andrew Rosindell in February. Now Nigel Farage has proposed that Bromley, along with Barking & Dagenham might also return to their parent counties, as a response to the expensive bloat at City Hall, the boroughs’ alleged neglect by the Metropolitan Police, and the imposition of unpopular policies such as the Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez).

The physical and administrative boundaries of the capital have never been static. London consumed almost the entire historic county of Middlesex during its great period of expansion in the 19th century. In the early 20th century, the London County Council extended its power over large parts of rural north-west Kent. Quiet countryside gave way to endless suburbia, a process mournfully fictionalized by the nature writer Henry Williamson in his series of novels A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight.

Yet the departure of outer boroughs in the modern day would not be mere bloodless bureaucratic re-organization. Implicit in Reform’s advocacy for this change is a recognition that such areas are some of the last places in Greater London to retain demographics comparable to the country at large, while the rest of the city becomes more akin to an internationalized city-state. Havering and Bromley have near-identical ethnic profiles: both were almost exactly two-thirds white British at the 2021 census, and about 75% white overall.

This is a clear divergence from most other parts of London, which in 2021 was only 37% white British and 54% white overall. Given current national debates about identity, immigration and patriotism, this difference is bound to be significant. Conservative parties perform well in those districts, as they do in Bexley, another borough whose demographics resemble those of the capital at the turn of the century: in 2001, the whole city was 58% white British and 71% white overall.

A downside for Reform of encouraging outer-borough separatism is that peeling off Right-leaning parts of London would strengthen the position of the Left-wing parties. The Greater London Assembly constituencies of Bexley & Bromley and Havering & Redbridge are held by the Tories and Reform respectively, and the significant blue vote in such areas helps towards the election of non-constituency members of the GLA. It would arguably symbolize a kind of abandonment of the capital by the party, when it could be using other policy levers to achieve its goals there.

This is a counsel of despair. London has not fallen, however despondent some Right-wingers might feel. It remains prosperous and productive, and no group committed to a scheme of national renewal can afford to simply throw up its hands in exasperation.

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Niall Gooch is a public sector worker and occasional writer who lives in Kent.

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