Welcome to London… Bailiffs tearing down a migrant ‘shanty town’, a fatal stabbing in Knightsbridge, and the rich fleeing. Another week in our tried, tarnished and dangerous capital

Six o’clock yesterday morning and the quiet of London’s Park Lane was shattered. 

More than 50 bailiffs had arrived to break up the sprawling migrant camp that had taken root over recent months in one of the world’s most exclusive postcodes.

A scraggy array of tents had been occupying the road’s grassy central reservation, just a couple of hundred yards from a previous encampment that had been dismantled. Once again, washing lines flapped with tired-looking underwear, pots and pans were piled high, and men sat in the sun gambling huge piles of cash.

But just after dawn it was all over. Amid angry exchanges and threatening words, the 30-odd migrants, men and women, started packing up their belongings into M&S shopping trolleys and wheeling them slowly towards Marble Arch as the clean-up team swooped and the open-top tourist buses started to rumble past. This was not the only alarming and unsettling scene to mar this expensive area of the capital.

Only two days before, Blue Stevens, a 24-year-old dad from Hampshire, was killed on a nearby Knightsbridge street corner by a masked mugger.

He was just outside the Nusr-Et Steakhouse, where a wagyu tomahawk steak costs £630, with his partner Tayla when the robber swung up on a bike. Some reports suggest that they tried to snatch his watch but police are looking at all possible motives.

Mr Stevens resisted, was stabbed in the chest and collapsed as Tayla, hysterical, screamed ‘Oh my God! Oh my God!’ Desperate efforts were made to revive him, but he bled out on the pavement and the mugger fled. All in broad daylight.

Welcome to London.

Our wonderful capital city lately seems to have been in the news for all the wrong reasons. Endless stories report that the city is increasingly lawless, dirty and dangerous, with an epidemic of violent stabbings, muggings and robberies by organised moped gangs known as ‘Rolex Rippers’ in posh, and what used to feel like safe, bits of London, swooping on anything that glitters and glistens; watches (ideally Rolexes), designer bags, jewellery, cars.

That its restaurants are closing in droves. That there has been an exodus of firms listing on the London Stock Exchange. That the top-end property markets are wobbling and its glossy draw and international cachet are fading.

And that those with money are leaving en masse thanks to a combination of spiralling security issues and Labour’s crazily punitive taxes aimed at the city’s non-doms – wealthy foreigners who were not born here, but are often the only ones who can afford to live in Belgravia, Knightsbridge and Mayfair townhouses and the £200 million apartments in One Hyde Park. Fleeing in record numbers, to Milan, Geneva, Dubai, Portugal. Anywhere, frankly, but here.

According to a recent report on global wealth by Henley & Partners, in 2024 the UK lost more millionaire residents than any city in the world except for Moscow – with 9,500 high-net-worth individuals departing in just 12 months.

The trigger was apparently Labour’s controversial inheritance tax law, which means that, for the first time, all global assets (instead of just UK ones) owned by non-doms are subject to 40 per cent tax after ten years in the UK. Everything. Regardless of whether it was inherited, generated or held outside the UK.

‘The stupidity of this is beyond comprehension,’ says Trevor Abrahamson of Glentree Estates. ‘If you want them to pay tax, they will pay tax. But not on everything.’ Two of his clients – Lakshmi Mittal, the Indian steel magnate, and Norwegian shipping magnate, John Fredriksen – both great Anglophiles, have already left for Dubai.

‘They’re wealth creators,’ says Mr Abrahamson. ‘Which idiotic country would create an environment so they leave?’

The issue is not that they should not be taxed. Of course they should. But the way it’s been done. Because these people are sophisticated and supremely mobile they are simply upping sticks to avoid payment.

And taking with them their families, staff, money, cars, planes and, perhaps most importantly for the future of London, their buying power.

Because while we might not all love the global super-rich – and, let’s face it, from a distance there is much to dislike, particularly the flashy types with the supercars, private jets and ostentatiously lavish lifestyles – they do like to spend, spend, spend. Which means that their mass exodus is having an unwelcome impact on our once brilliant capital city.

Right now, London should be deep in its summer season. Throbbing with the buzz of tourists, Wimbledon finals, outdoor concerts, opera in the park, money being splashed.

You don’t have to look very hard to see the fallout.

Let’s start with Eaton Square in Belgravia – traditionally one of the preferred postcodes of the uber-rich, where a four-bedroom stuccoed townhouse could cost £25 million and a two-bedroom flat, maybe £7 million. It’s always been subdued, but this week it felt completely abandoned.

The streets were deserted, as were the pristine communal gardens – locked and empty on a hot, sunny day. I had never seen so many empty parking spaces in central London and the blinds were down and curtains drawn at most of the windows. The only life was provided by the odd builder, cleaner and a car valet, hard at it buffing an already shiny black Porsche. ‘We come and clean cars here every week, just in case they fly back into town,’ he said. ‘They don’t like it dusty, but they’re not coming back so much now. Many houses are for sale.’

It’s the same scene in nearby Chester Square, once home to Baroness Thatcher. Empty and lifeless, with more than 20 luxury properties on the market – some lingering despite huge price cuts.

Across in Knightsbridge’s Montpelier Square – a quick pop to Harrods and round the corner from Wednesday’s dreadful attack – at least nine houses are for sale.

The same in Kensington where prices are down to 2014 levels.

And over in Mayfair, there is plenty to buy in the multi-millionaire and billionaire bracket with some prices down as much as 26 per cent. But according to expert Jo Eccles, managing director of the property consultancy firm Eccord, just six per cent of the houses available are under offer. Because the uber-rich might have gone, but they don’t need to sell – particularly not at a loss.

‘They’re mostly wealthy enough to be complacent about it,’ she says. So they just sit empty. For weeks. Months, sometimes at a time. With just a property agent popping in every week or so to validate the insurance.

Camilla Dell’s company Black Brick provides this service.

‘It’s by far the fastest growing bit of my business,’ she says. ‘None of them want to go. The UK used to be a welcoming place for wealthy people to live and raise their family and work. This is no longer the case. It has definitely lost its status a bit.’

Of course, all this hasn’t all happened in the past few months. The exodus has been building slowly since the 2008 recession, economic uncertainty after Brexit and a gradual erosion of the protected status of non-doms in the UK under both Conservative and Labour governments. After Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, London’s wealthy Russians evaporated. And the sense of unbridled crime is deeply off-putting, particular to the rich.

‘Security is definitely a consideration,’ says Jo Eccles. ‘You need to be more streetwise than you ever had to be. So you don’t wear a big watch in London. Many bring their own security.’

It is tricky tracking the super-rich, because their finances are so complex and they have so many homes, and Henley & Partners’ figures have attracted some criticism.

But can it be a coincidence that so many restaurants closed in London this year? And that, while there are still plenty of great places, crammed and buzzing, there are also a lot of alarmingly empty dining rooms.

A friend tells me that, a couple of weeks ago, he dined at Dinner at the Mandarin Oriental (where the tasting menu is £170 for five courses). For their entire sitting, theirs was the only table occupied.

The same week, a single table of late lunchers were the sole diners at Langan’s Brasserie in Mayfair until the early evening.

And last month, a colleague was invited to lunch in the wonderfully opulent dining room at The Dorchester on Park Lane where, for 90 minutes, her party were the only diners in the restaurant. ‘It was dead. That’s the truth. And we had the staff coming to our table of four with desperation in their eyes,’ my colleague said.

It didn’t help the luxurious ambience that, last month, before they were evicted and moved further up Park Lane, the migrant campers were right outside the hotel. The whole of Mayfair, once so impossibly glossy and exclusive, feels a bit forlorn.

Shisha bars and glitzy cake shops have popped up. Bins are left out on the street in Berkeley Square. Beggars all over.

Scott’s on Mount Street – where, not so long ago, it was almost impossible to get a table – has availability every day this week. And the really posh shops there – Jimmy Choo, Balmain, Oscar de la Renta – were all empty when I visited this week.

In Lanvin the doorman looks like he has not moved for hours and in the huge Bentley garage in Berkeley Square, a clutch of staff lounge on the counter chatting, untroubled by any customers.

The daft thing is that Britain has spent decades courting the super-rich to stimulate its economy. They’ve been flocking to London since the 1970s.

First the Greeks, then the Iranians, the Arabs, Nigerians, Indians – attracted like bees to the honeypot of the city’s financial stability, safer lifestyle, green spaces but, most of all, our very warm financial welcome.

As a result, large chunks of central London sprung up to service them. Swanky bars and restaurants. Supercar dealers. Madly over-the-top luxury accommodation, such as 60 Curzon, an uber-luxe development in Mayfair which had all manner of flats available to buy when I popped my head in this week.

And One Hyde Park – barely 100 yards from where Blue Stevens was killed.

Developed by the Candy brothers, it is a totally ridiculous glass craziness of flats that cost up to £200 million with amazing views of Hyde Park and amenities include everything from bulletproof glass to a 21-metre ozone pool and room service from the five-star Mandarin Oriental next door. Oh yes, and their own Rolex shop downstairs, though I’m not sure business will be booming there right now.

Of course, the non-doms are not our only wealthy residents. Some experts claim that the plummeting property prices will finally reopen some markets – particularly Kensington and Knightsbridge – to domestic buyers, shifting families (albeit very wealthy ones who can weather the next round of taxes) back into the middle of town.

And with the re-election of Trump, Americans are flocking over – mostly to Kensington, Notting Hill and St John’s Wood.

‘The Trump effect is huge,’ says Jo Eccles. ‘I had clients calling on the day of the election to buy in London and they keep coming.’

But it seems that they’re coming to a rather diminished London. A city that feels tired and tarnished, where migrants put tent villages outside five-star hotels and, where some neighbourhoods, are completely deserted. And, most worryingly, as the dreadful events of Wednesday evening outside the Nusr-Et Steakhouse proved, is also now alarmingly dangerous.