Power postcodes — so hot right now. Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng, the current Prime Minister and Chancellor, famously both live in Greenwich, while Foreign Secretary James Cleverly is just over the hill in Blackheath.
Proximity to power matters. Lobbyists, businessmen and political donors all pay breathtaking sums of money for it. But what does it feel like to get it gratis? At last, I know first-hand.
After years of living so close, yet so far — Holborn and St Pancras not Islington, Shepherd’s Bush instead of Notting Hill — by dint of a short-term let I’m in Greenwich at the same time as Truss and Kwarteng are in power. It’s reassuring, too, to know that I’m not the only one worried about where I’ll be six months down the line.
Being part of the Government’s Greenwich gang is as intoxicating as you might imagine. While I stroll down the High Street I can practically hear the high-pitched whine of political power (at least, that’s the sound I imagine it emits). Around every corner I expect to bump into the Chancellor, clutching a sheaf of papers marked “OBR publication date — final FINAL”. I peer into the back of coffee shops to see if Truss is perched on one of the rattan chairs, making her own contribution to the nation’s growth by necking five coffees in an hour while fine-tuning a plan to get her budget through Parliament. I suppose for Greenwich tourists will have something new to goggle at: so long the Observatory, the Cutty Sark, the old naval college. Hello, embattled British government.
In fact, south London is where it’s at for politicos these days. Boris and Carrie Johnson are reportedly close to moving to Herne Hill, where eagle-eyed residents are on high alert for the yellow moving vans last seen hard at work in Downing Street.
North London, and I say this with some regret as a born-and-bred north Londoner, is thus passe. Unless Sir Keir Starmer nails the next election — then it’s all coming to Islington once more. That’s the thing about power postcodes and politics in these times.
Everything changes so swiftly, you never know which area will be hot next. That is, so long as the PMs of the future live in London. If they didn’t? Doesn’t bear thinking about.
