If Manchester wants to define itself as being second behind London then they can knock themselves out. But increasingly, Birmingham’s MPs, council leaders and business figures have taken the view that trying to fight London is pointless.Īnd a second heretical thought follows logically from this – that the whole idea of a “second city” is meaningless. Once upon a time, this might have been regarded as heretical thoughts. The goal for the West Midlands has to be find a way of ensuring London can be used as a national asset to benefit the entire country – not to become a smaller version of the capital. There’s no point trying to compete with it. But with 10 million people, and a global profile and influence matched only by New York, London is a different beast to Birmingham, Manchester or Leeds. Some people argue that it’s not a city at all, although I’m not sure what we could call it instead. The real point is this: London is something different to the other cities of the UK.

It might be tempting to see the documentary as the latest contribution to the debate about whether Manchester or Birmingham is the “second city”, but that wasn’t really the topic Mr Davis was addressing.Īnd I’m not sure whether his proposal for a mega city in the north was entirely serious, or whether it was meant more as an illustration of what would have to happen if the UK really did hope to create a new city in the same league as London. It could involve improving transport links between the major urban areas so that nipping between Leeds and Liverpool is as easy as journeying across London. This doesn’t have to mean a continuous built-up area, concreting over the entire north of England. His answer is to create a new city in the north with a combined population of roughly half London’s – taking in Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool, as well as their surrounding areas. The capital has a population of just under 10 million, while Greater Manchester has 2.5 million and the West Midlands metropolitan boroughs have 2.4 million between them. This is a phenomena known to economists as agglomeration.Īnd the trouble with Birmingham, or Greater Manchester, is that they’re just too small to follow London’s example. London’s success is a result of packing so many people into the same place, according to Mr Davis. Neither Birmingham nor Manchester deserve the epithet, according to BBC journalist Evan Davis, whose two-part series Mind the Gap looked at the relationship between London and the rest of the country. Britain doesn't have a second city, according to a BBC documentary that’s captured the attention of Birmingham’s political class.

Stockport From Above by Jonathan Webb