Independent London

Ken Livingstone was asked in an interview what he would most like to achieve as mayor. He replied:

Total independence for London. If London was independent we would have more people than half the members of the UN do, we’d be able to use more of our wealth to provide better infrastructure and a better quality of life instead of pumping £20 bn more into the national economy than we get back.

I’m all in favour of an independent London. It’s so different from the rest of the country that it skews everything.

For instance, London is multicultural and has lots of really rich people (and very poor ones, too), which isn’t true for the rest of the country. This makes it very hard to create national policies.

However, one issue is how large the Republic (or Kingdom) of London should be.

If it was created based on its current area, so many commuters would be left outside it that England and London wouldn’t be independent at all.

So I think it needs to be fairly big, probably taking in everything within the green belt around it. Perhaps it should also include everything between London and France, given that it would be odd for people from Dover to have to travel through London to get to their capital in central England.