Apparently, I’m Supposed to be Pitied for Living in London
A Londoner’s response to Reform UK’s weirdly patronising pitch to the capital
As of this year of our Lord 2026, I will have had the privilege of being a Londoner for over a decade. I moved here from South Africa with my husband who was asked to come over to bolster the health service. Our decision to make the move had terribly little to do with whether the city was glamorous, fashionable or because we were chasing a grand metropolitan fantasy.
We sort of just… landed, in London.
There was very little starry-eyedness in our arrival - we got here pretty pragmatically, slightly tired from the long flight over and with all of our possessions packed into four suitcases1, we, in our early thirties, started our life in this city.
Over the preceding decade, London to me has become not just the city I live in, but my home.
Which is why yesterday I found myself blinking a little bit confusedly after Reform UK’s first press conference of the year when their newly minted mayoral candidate2, Leila Cunningham decided to tell the people she would like to vote for her that people now pity them.
“When I was growing up, London was the place to live, the place to work, the place to build a life. People envied us that live here. Now, they pity us. They say: ‘London’s a bit too dangerous for me.’”
I’ll be very honest here - up to today, I sincerely did not realise that I was an object of pity. No one told me. It certainly has never come up in conversation with friends, on the bus, in the pub or while standing around complaining about tourist season in London to no one in particular.
Now, I’m not what I would consider a political strategist, despite my unhealthy obsession interest in politics, but I’m fairly sure that kicking off what will be an already needlessly long mayoral candidacy by telling your voters that they are pitiable is exactly what I would call a winning plan.
I mean, it’s certainly bold, I will give Cunningham that, but “Vote for me, you sad, piteous creatures!” just doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as “Yes We Can”, now does it?
But I also have to slightly confusedly ask - who the bloody hell does Leila Cunningham think she is?
Her self-positioning feels vaguely oracle like in her red suit with the gold buttons and the slight aura of disdain that she’s giving off, speaking on behalf of this mysterious “they3” who now apparently spend their day pitying the likes of me and the other nine and a bit million people who work and live in London.
But we all know what Ms Cunningham is doing - it’s as clear as that condescending sneer on her face:
She’s continuing the culture war around the capital that has been ongoing for years now. She’s putting forward the same tired thesis that everyone from Richard Tice, Nigel Farage, Robert Jenrick and even Donald Trump has - and it never really deviates too much. London is just too for them. Too diverse. Too tolerant. Too international. Too comfortable with change.
London, each one of these people have suggested, with varying degrees of subtlety, isn’t really British anymore.
Except there’s a bit of an issue with this argument that’s being constantly flung at us from Cunningham and her fellow commentators - London has always been these things.
Always.
London, in its 1,979 approximate years of existence, has been a constant magnet for people from elsewhere. Other. Ever since the Romans themselves showed up4 and decided the Thames looked a decent spot to set up shop in fact. This city’s entire history has been one of constant change, movement and reinvention - and everyone from across Europe and the world has always treated it this way.
From the Huguenots fleeing persecution in France to the Jewish communities of the East End, to the waves of Irish, Italian, Greek, Turkish, Polish, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Nigerian, Caribbean and countless other communities who have shaped this metropolis for decades if not centuries.
It is not a recent development that’s happened while we were all distracted - it’s not a bug or an aberration. The multiculturalism that I, and millions of others live in every day is a feature of this city, and I would venture a defining one at that.
I think about my own street sometimes as I’m walking down the hill to the tube station - within a hundred metres5 of where I stand there’s a Polski Sklep which I pop into now and then for excellent pierogi, there’s a Spanish tapas place that we frequent far too often on balmy summer days, a pub that’s been here since the 1800s where everyone seems to drink together regardless where they’re from, my Syrian barber which I visit monthly with whom I’ve crafted a whole other life and just a short walk further away a South African shop where I am still able to get biltong, boerewors and Creme Soda from when the mood strikes me to do so.
There’s my local pharmacist from Lithuania who can see from a mile off when I have yet another sinusitis that I’m looking to be banished; the Barista from Brazil that knows my order off by heart6 when I get a coffee for the tube at seven in the morning and the two lovely ladies, one from Devon, the other French, from the local charity shop who happily take in our old clothes once a year or so. All in, this small, diverse group of people build up that thing that so many people have been saying is lost for years - community.
And you know what? Absolutely nobody pities, nor needs to pity me for this.
As a Londoner - as someone who chose this city and whom this city has, in its own gruff, slightly aggressive way, chosen back - I find Leila Cunningham’s entire premise completely reprehensible. Not just because it’s offensive (though it absolutely is), but because it’s so completely and fundamentally dishonest about what London is and always has been.
What Cunningham and her ilk are completely ignorant to - whether by choice or whether they’re really so out of touch - is that London’s diversity, internationalism and constant state of becoming aren’t weaknesses to feel pity for, or for us poor inhabitants to overcome. They’re the precise things that make this city extraordinary and why it continues to attract talent, creativity, energy and investment from all over the world.
They’re exactly the reason why London has remained a global capital for so many centuries and why it’s a place that people still come to reinvent themselves - where they can find belonging regardless of where they started out.
Yes, London of course has its own share of problems - very real ones. Housing costs that make you weep, transport systems that occasionally decide to occasionally have spectacular existential crises7, genuine issues around structural inequality and opportunity that need addressing, and following 14 years of Tory austerity, major issues with both the lack of policing and how the city is policed.
Not a single one of these problems, though, is meaningfully or structurally caused by diversity and not one of them can be solved by Nostalgia for a London that just never was.
So no, Ms Cunningham - we do not need your pity. None of us do. What we need are politicians who understand what London actually is, who celebrate the city instead of denigrate it and its residents as creatures to pity, and who are interested in solving the actual problems instead of manufactured culture war ones.
London does not need pity or to be saved from itself - it needs protecting from people who fundamentally misunderstand it.
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One suitcase was fully dedicated to pots, pans and the various kitchen accoutrements that I still use today - there was no way I was leaving my Le Creuset pot in a charity store in Johannesburg.
For an election in 2028, which by my count (which can sometimes be a bit dubious) is in a full two and nearly a half years time).
Also, who are these people? Do they have a club and a newsletter? Do they gather monthly in Home Counties village halls, mournfully shaking their heads while discussing how terribly dreadful it must be having access to world-class museums, theatres, restaurants serving food from every imaginable corner of the planet and a transport system that, despite our collective groans, actually gets you places?
To note - the Romans were immigrants too, if we’re keeping score.
Or yards, or horse hands or whatever the right measure of unit is here - a decade in and I still haven’t bothered to learn the local measuring units. I’m sure Leila Cunningham will immediately call for my deportation. Sorry, not sorry.
Large Cappuccino, Extra Shot, no chocolate on top.
I’m looking at you Northern and Central Lines.
Great post . My grandparents and mother were Irish immigrants . I was born in a London Borough.
The greatest city in the world.
We don’t need these self appointed, entitled amateurs to lead us. We will lead ourselves. It’s called community and mutuality. We don’t need the toxic nostalgia for empire and the outdated structures these people peddle . It’s irrelevant.
I was in London on Tuesday. Visiting the Tate for a couple of exhibitions.
The city was quiet (time of year) peaceful and well London. Cabbies whinging. Commuters scurrying. Bloody road works everywhere.
Would I want to live there. Na! Not my bag.
To be fair at home, this time of year the fashionable look is mud, warm layers, woolly hats and boots.
The idea that London is somehow a sink of decivililisation is a self serving creation of diseased and regressive minds.
She won’t win.