Talk to any young Londoner these days and rather than envying the sparkling armada of promise sailing towards them, their glowing skin and youthful beauty, it’s hard not to feel something different: pity.
For who would be a young person in London today? The city has become completely unaffordable for anyone who isn’t on a massive salary or is independently wealthy.
Take renting, which has become a Squid Game-style dystopian hellscape. Two London districts saw 34 per cent hikes in the cost of renting last year and stories about landlords suddenly asking for a 30 per cent increase or asking potential renters to pay the first year in advance are rife. We haven’t built enough new homes that aren’t (brace yourself for the two words Londoners hate more than any others) ‘luxury flats’, and the ones we do build are often bought by investors, so demand is outstripping supply and causing carnage in the market.
I rented for 10 years in London, then was able to buy a house and since then the price of my very ordinary four bedroom Victorian terrace in Acton has more than doubled in value. Does that make me happy? Far from it. It doesn’t benefit me as I don’t want to leave London and I’m sad that a very unremarkable home is now so far out of the reach of all the young people I know.
Conditions have never been so inhospitable as they are for a first-time buyer today. Not only have prices shot up but mortgage rates are the highest they have been for years.
So London becomes an inheritocracy, where only the children of the wealthy can cling on. More than two-fifths of buyers in London received help from parents in 2020, according to a report by Legal & General financial services — a far higher proportion than anywhere else in the UK.
If London is only feasible for those with inherited wealth, what this means is that more and more truly talented young people will flee the city and we say goodbye to the Tracey Emins or Brett Andersons of today. This is how the capital is levelled down.
While a normal family home has spun out of reach, salaries have atrophied. The Resolution Foundation says workers in the UK are living through a two-decade wage stagnation.
While the older generation have enjoyed triple-lock inflation-matched pensions and the economic sun shining on them, this generation will have to work until they probably quite literally die while enduring the biggest tax burden for 70 years washed down with a real-terms pay cut. Cheers!
Meanwhile, the oldest people in the country are now on average nine times as wealthy as those in their early 30s.
Society works by people thinking the system is designed to help them but if people start to think they’re shouldering all the burden while they are unlikely to get anything back that will be corrosive.
We need to make sure London is a place where young people can thrive. Currently we are sitting back and watching them struggle in impossible conditions. We must do more to help them.
Jack and Saoirse, a breath of fresh air
I’ve been mesmerised by the BBC’s hit drama The Gold, based on the £26 million Brink’s-Mat heist of 1983. The absolute break-out star for me is Jack Lowden, who gives the performance of a lifetime as the criminal Kenneth Noye.
Not only is he hugely talented, but it seems like he is a nice guy too. Speaking about his partner Saoirse Ronan, Lowden said recently: “We are not competitive, not in the slightest, because I’d lose. There is just zero competition, because there is no competition.” He described working with her on set: “When you’re given a Ferrari like her, it’s all about how you make everything good for the Ferrari to show off.”
It’s true that Ronan — boasting four Oscar nominations for her roles in films including Atonement and Little Women — is the more established actor.
But I suspect Lowden will, given time, give her a run for her money on the awards front.
In a world full of celebrity power couples feeding off each other’s fame and commercial partnerships these two — more likely to be papped in Islington dressed down with their terrier, Fran, than on the red carpet together – are a real breath of fresh air.
