When I fired off a tweet about my day trip to London last week, I didn’t expect it to be read by 12 million people around the world.
But that’s exactly what happened when I shared a few observations about our once-great capital under Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan. ‘All these things happened to me in London today,’ I wrote. ‘I paid nearly £30 for a train ticket to take me into London from a town just 30 miles away – on a Saturday.
‘The first person I sat next to decided to have a FaceTime conversation with his friend on speakerphone, so we all had to listen to it.
‘The train was late by 40 minutes due to unexplained “signalling issues”. It was also filthy. I paid nearly £8 for a pint. I offered a woman my seat on the Tube without realising she was with a man – who intervened and said: “No man.” He was not from the UK. I think he took my gesture as an insult.
‘I was asked for money by homeless people three times in one day.
‘I noticed that several people who are paid to give information to taxpayers and tourists over the Tannoy on the Tube cannot speak English properly.
‘A cabbie told me: “London is dead most nights.” Restaurants are struggling and hideously overpriced. I was constantly aware I should not get my phone out on the street – as more than 70,000 were stolen last year. I also discovered there were 90,000 shoplifting offences in London last year, up 54 per cent.’
Behind all these observations lies a deeper point that has gradually become unavoidable. London is over. It’s so over.
‘I was constantly aware I should not get my phone out on the street – as more than 70,000 were stolen last year’, writes Matt Goodwin
A video grab of the moment three brazen thieves jump over Asda petrol station store counter to steal booze and fags
Closed down retail spaces on Oxford Street on 4th May 2025 in London
A migrant camps outside tents on Park Lane in central London, an area known as Billionaires’ Row
It’s morphed into a city that is unrecognisable from years ago and is now in manifest and rapid decline, with deteriorating standards and no real sense of identity or belonging. While my tweet predictably irritated London liberals, it clearly struck a chord with a much larger audience.
Millions have watched as a toxic cocktail of accelerated demographic change, mass immigration and economic stagnation have ripped the heart and soul out of our capital.
Another person who has noticed this is respected British writer Professor David Goodhart, who last week pointed to many of the same concerns. A quarter-century ago, he wrote, London was a booming metropolitan centre: a beacon of openness and opportunity for the rest of the country and, indeed, the world. But no more.
When a recent report suggested that white Britons with no immigrant parents look set to become a minority in the UK by the year 2063, Goodhart pointed out: ‘I heard nobody saying, “rapid demographic change is nothing to worry about – just look at London”.’ He has a point.
London has been irreversibly transformed. White Britons, the indigenous population for centuries, now represent one-third of the city.
Only 22 per cent of children in Greater London’s schools are White British – and in one school, Kobi Nazrul Primary in Whitechapel, not a single child speaks English as their first language.
Four in ten people currently living in London were born overseas. Close to one in seven are Muslim.
And nearly one-quarter of Londoners do not speak English as their main language. While London’s liberal set may respond to this by repeating, in robotic fashion, ‘diversity is our strength’, Goodhart asks a more troubling question.
Spencer Duarte (in yellow) being tackled by members of the public after snatching a phone
Delayed and cancelled train information is shown on screen at Waterloo Station due to Storm Darragh on December 7, 2024 in London
Yes, immigration has long been a feature of London. But is all this demographic change actually improving the quality of life in the city? Or is it making it far worse?
Compare the capital to the rest of the country. Shoplifting is up 15 per cent in England – but has soared by 54 per cent in the capital. Theft is down 14 per cent in England – but has rocketed by 41 per cent in London.
Home ownership in London is down 20 per cent since the early 1990s – while rents are up 85 per cent on the past 15 years, and earnings are up just 21 per cent. And even in some prime areas of central London, half of all social housing includes people who were not born in Britain.
Another thing that has collapsed in recent years is London’s fertility rate, which has slumped 30 per cent in the past decade, making it the lowest of all UK regions.
When people no longer want children, it’s a pretty good sign of how they feel about their surroundings. There are other things I could add. Like the fact there is an alleged rape every hour in London. In just five years, reported sexual offences against women and girls rose 14 per cent while homelessness and rough sleeping climbed 26 per cent in one year. Does this look like a thriving city to you?
Knife crime, gang violence, robberies, pickpocketing and so-called ‘moped-enabled crimes’ have also become everyday features of London life. And 30,000 millionaires left London in the past decade according to research from Henley & Partners, a firm that helps high net-worth clients move countries.
Meanwhile, according to a recent Thames Water study, up to 600,000 illegal migrants may be living in London, flouting our laws and taking taxpayers for a ride.
While these findings have been subject to debate, if correct, how can you possibly sustain the social contract in a major city when it’s possible that one in every 13 people is an illegal immigrant? Or when nearly one-quarter of the people in London do not speak English as their main language –while 320,000 cannot speak English at all?
If London really is so vibrant and wonderful, why, according to one survey from Opinium, do one in four Londoners say they feel unsafe in their own neighbourhood?
The truth is, London’s famed diversity has changed in profound and negative ways since the 1990s.
The European bankers, asset managers and Polish plumbers who came two decades ago have now largely been replaced by low-wage, low-skill migrant workers from across the Middle East and Northern Africa – a situation that worsened hugely during the last Tory government, which opened the floodgates to migrants from the developing world.
This more recent wave of immigration, as studies by the Office for Budget Responsibility and elsewhere have made clear, is taking more from the economy than it’s putting in, exacerbating not just the housing crisis but our glaring lack of growth.
To be clear, this is not to criticise the migrants themselves. It’s merely to accept reality. Like much of the rest of the country, London’s energy, productivity and prosperity are being drained by a model of low-skill, low-wage, non-European immigration that makes no economic sense.
Take one iconic example: London’s famous black cabs with a driver who possesses a deep and historic knowledge of our capital. Increasingly, he is being replaced by an Uber driver from Somalia or Afghanistan who drives you around while relying on Google Maps.
Rather than build a dynamic, integrated and unified capital city with a clear sense of history and identity, these forces are inexorably pushing us towards the ongoing ‘Yookayfication’ of our capital city and, indeed, our country. Increasingly, the label ‘Yookay’ has caught on to refer to the jarring aesthetic quality of the country today – a mix of cultures, languages and identities spreading across the landscape.
Examples include the proliferation of Palestinian flags and obvious signs of sectarianism in migrant communities, the spread of multicultural ‘English’ with its global slang, the mainstreaming of gang culture in everything from fashion to advertising, the constant smell of weed, the American candy store next to the kebab shop, the Deliveroo riders scrolling through their phone and so on. All have become symbols of a new, migration-fuelled and sagging economy.
Members of the Metropolitan Police encourage Pro-Palestine supporters to leave Trafalgar Square on June 23, 2025 in London, England
Protestors clash with MET police officers during a rally in support of pro-Palestinian group Palestine Action after British government announced the group’s ban, in Trafalgar Square, in central London, on June 23, 2025
Members of the Pro-Palestinian demonstration are removed from Trafalgar Square on June 23, 2025 in London, England
As Lord Frost pointed out recently, as these demographic changes take effect, the ‘Yookay’ risks gradually becoming a permanent new country: a successor state to Great Britain, with a new identity, character, culture, values and way of life. Nowhere are these changes more profound than in our capital.
As David Goodhart asks: ‘What happens when London’s white British population falls below 20 per cent in ten years? Is there some minimum number of natives that a capital requires before it ceases to be the capital?’
While I’m not sure of the answer, I am certain that unless there is a radical change of direction, London will look increasingly unlike the city I once knew.
