onlondon.co.uk

It’s 8am on a Monday in October 2023. A man in a van is driving slowly down Leigham Court Road in Streatham, honking his horn and shouting at the stationary traffic in the opposite lane. “I hope you’ve brought your packed lunches with you, you’re gonna be here a while!”

He’s not wrong. Leigham Court Road is a little over a mile long, and traffic – including several 417 buses – is at a standstill along its entire length. Pedestrians and cyclists are breathing in the fumes, the latter attempting to navigate the logjam.

In his Introduction to the Conservative Party’s 2019 general election manifesto Boris Johnson said his government had already mapped out a programme to “level up, spreading opportunity across the whole United Kingdom”. The document said this meant “not just investing in our great towns and cities, as well as our rural and coastal areas, but giving them far more control of how that investment is made”. It continued: “In the 21st century, we need to get away from the idea that ‘Whitehall knows best’ and that all growth must inevitably start in London.”