Editorial: A week that offers good news for the capital
It’s hardly a 200 watt halogen bulb, but word of a potential vaccine does at least provide a flicker of light at the end of this interminable 2020 tunnel.
After a year of unrelentingly negative headlines, it counted as unalloyed good news. Not just for our fight against the virus, but for the capital too.
This week could well be a turning point for London’s immediate future – and though the green shoots of recovery are not yet flowering, they can be found in other news too.
Read more: UK firm signs deal with Pfizer to deliver vaccine ingredients
The first was the collapse in Zoom stocks as news of the Pfizer vaccine broke across the world. To this newspaper, that suggests that people are tiring of the interminable train of video calls – that as social beings, we crave social contact.
The novelty of working from home day-in, day-out has worn off: perhaps that is why, as we look down from our office windows here in the City, we can still see office workers enjoying a pint outside one of the few pubs to be offering takeaways.
And the second, more business-focussed reason for optimism comes from a sector that you wouldn’t necessarily expect.
Land Securities reported a £835m loss in its half-year results – and yet remains optimistic about the office market in London. Landsec don’t get a lot wrong: and their Panglossian outlook is shared by the new boss BNP Paribas’ real estate department in the UK, who told City PM earlier this week that London remains a thoroughly desirable destination for global investors in commercial property.
So what gives? What about all those apocalyptic predictions of Covid-19 dealing a fatal blow to the capital?
Read more: Landsec battered but firm remains optimistic for London
The truth is it still yet could. “Building back better” in London means flexible thinking.
It means the Department for Transport and the rail firms – those yet to be nationalised – working together on flexible season tickets to allow commuters to adjust to a new normal without being stung whenever they come in from the suburbs.
It means the Treasury rapidly rethinking their furlough scheme and being more flexible on allowing staff to work more of their hours, encouraging employers and employees to begin the gradual process of reacquainting themselves with each other.
It means Whitehall being flexible with the European Union on issues and sectors that barely trouble the economic scorers to ensure that our most important industries – notably financial services – are able to thrive after Brexit.
And more than anything it means those firms who are invested in the London economy – from pubs and graphic design agencies to their landlords and their suppliers – being flexible about payment terms and embracing the uncertainty of the next few months. This is a time for long-term thinking, rather than chasing quick wins.
London is not dead. It’s been through worse than this.
As we start to sniff a little more optimism, let’s hope the public and private sector do their bit to ensure that the capital is raring to go for the recovery – stuffed full of the innovative, talented and determined Londoners who make this small patch of concrete the greatest city in the world.