If the old County of London boundaries remained today?

[elinorhelyn]

How would it have affected the city's development and politics?

[sirbenjamin]

- Johnson highly unlikely to have ever become mayor

- No GLC, but every chance a continuing LCC would've been similar in nature

- Lots of people who claim to live in Surrey or Middlesex etc. (when they don't) would actually be correct

- Far more disputes between TFL and the suburbs excluded from London - like the kerfuffle over the Watford Met project - which may have got in the way of transport policy and development.


However, I think a more interesting question might be how the surrounding counties evolved with so many London suburbs remaining part of them. Would Surrey be dominated by Croydon? Would Middlesex survive or disappear anyway in the 1974 shake-up? Would the Green Belt be drawn-up differently, giving us more semi-rural areas in what are now Outer London boroughs?

[Deleted]

This is an interesting one.

If there's no GLC, Thatcher doesn't abolish it in 1986, so would we have a London Mayoralty?

If we don't have Greater London, then we don't have the modern 32-borough structure, do we? So while a reorganization might have happened within the 1889 boundaries, what happens to the Essex, Middlesex, and Surrey boroughs etc? Would you still have a Hornsey or a Southgate local authority, for instance? I could see some interesting changes.

I wonder if the Tories would have lobbied to keep Streatham in Wandsworth in this timeline. If they did, then that borough might have fallen much earlier, say in 1994. What would it mean for things like Crossrail, London City Airport etc? Where would we have hosted the 2012 Olympics?

I think a London Mayoralty might come about later, say 2017, but if we don't have a Greater London, do we have the 1974 government reorganization?

I don't see Croydon dominating Surrey on its own, but assuming Mitcham trends to Labour from the 80s onwards, you might see more competitive Surrey council elections, but Labour's leads in the likes of Croydon and Mitcham wouldn't be enough to give them a cat in hell's chance of winning control of Surrey in any way shape or form.

For me, the most dramatic changes would be in Essex since Labour surely dominate Barking & Dagenham, Newham, Redbridge, etc as they do now. I think Essex would still be a swing county in GEs and the county council would be a good barometer of national opinion perhaps. How does somewhere like Barking & Dagenham develop if it's part of Essex? I guess Right to Buy still happens so the demographic changes probably still occur in the 2000s.

I guess Middlesex could be an interesting area politically. but Labour probably has the upper hand there from the mid-90s onwards, but a hypothetical Middlesex County Council could possibly have gone NOC in 2002 and or 2006.

Generally, this timeline would probably save Londoners a decent wad since you don't have the GLA to contend with. Shaun Bailey probably never gets elected to anything in this timeline.

If Boris Johnson isn't mayor, then he may not play such a prominent role in UK politics, possibly just remaining a backbencher after Howard demoted him from the Shadow Cabinet. I'm not sure David Cameron gives him a cabinet post and you could see someone else like Michael Gove becoming Prime Minister in 2019 if Brexit still happens. However, if Boris Johnson isn't as well-known, does he support Leave at all and is his impact as great as in our timeline? I don't think it is.

[The Bishop]

Jul 9, 2023 20:24:01 GMT elinorhelyn said:

How would it of affected the city's development and politics?

Have, *have*, HAVE.

[Davıd Boothroyd]

Unfortunately I don't think this is a realistic 'what-if'. If the Herbert reforms to create the GLC and London Boroughs hadn't happened in the late 1960s, London would have been included in the Wilson government's Royal Commission, and would then have been included in the Heath government's 1974 reform.

[sirbenjamin]

Jul 10, 2023 9:20:33 GMT The Bishop said:

Jul 9, 2023 20:24:01 GMT elinorhelyn said:

How would it of affected the city's development and politics?

Have, *have*, HAVE.

That's one way of articulating the 'greed is good' philosophy I suppose...

[Sibboleth]

It's more or less an impossible premise: the only way in which it might have survived would be as a layer in between a looser metropolitan authority and the boroughs; perhaps if the old boroughs had been retained and had most of their powers moved upwards. But that would have been against the fashions of the time, all of it. A more plausible question would be what if the GLC had the boundaries it was originally supposed to.

[greenhert]

Jul 10, 2023 9:35:32 GMT Davıd Boothroyd said:

Unfortunately I don't think this is a realistic 'what-if'. If the Herbert reforms to create the GLC and London Boroughs hadn't happened in the late 1960s, London would have been included in the Wilson government's Royal Commission, and would then have been included in the Heath government's 1974 reform.

That is a good "what if" in of itself though-what would have happened to Greater London if reforms to its structure had occurred in 1974 along with all the other counties in the UK and not 1965 as it did in real life? 

[elinorhelyn]

I know most of you have deligitimesed this hypothetical but after the Uxbridge by election isn't this an exercise in what happens when you have essentially two London's diametrically opposed to one another al la ULEZ

[Delighted Of Tunbridge Wells]

Jul 9, 2023 20:24:01 GMT elinorhelyn said:

How would it have affected the city's development and politics?

I think we'd see a situation like County Dublin perhaps, a split into 4 larger counties (e.g. in Dublin - this is Fingal CC, Dublin City Council, South Dublin CC and Dun Laoghaire - Rathdown Council) and many smaller town councils within. So perhaps a LCC, both North and South Middlesex county councils, West Essex CC and South London CC.