One of the cultural events that defined Great Britain in 2000, when I lived there, was the wedding of a hairdresser from Liverpool and a handsome London aristocrat. The nationally televised ceremony famously went awry when the bride balked at the last moment, saying (in her thick Scouse accent) that she couldn’t leave her friends and family in Liverpool and move to London, like so many had before her. I will always remember that last shot of her walking alone in her big poufy wedding dress, head held high, down the long driveway of her jilted-fiancé’s family estate.
OK, so none of this actually happened — it was an episode of a soap opera called Brookside. So what? Fans of the show, which was among the UK’s most popular in the 1980s and ‘90s, will never forget that moment. A quarter of a century later, it’s hard to fathom how much the world has changed.
For decades, London has drained top talent from the rest of the country. As more people went to university, the most ambitious among them moved to London to build their lives and careers, leaving the rest of the country behind economically. And it wasn’t just London: All over the world, big cities in rich countries were a draw.
Continue reading the entire piece here at Bloomberg Opinion (paywall)
______________________
Allison Schrager is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal.
