*Lord Adonis at Kings College London, a guy I don't know much about, but he sure doesn't lack for eloquent historicization.
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/sspp/policy-institute/news/assets/The-Golden-Arrow-Lord-Adonis-Speech.pdf
(...)
Let me start by transporting you to another great global city.
‘In the last days of Pope Eugenius the Fourth [in the 15th century], two of his servants, the learned Poggius and a friend, ascended the Capitoline Hill, reposed themselves among the ruins of columns and temples, and viewed from that commanding spot the ... prospects of desolation ... The place and the object gave ample scope for moralising on the vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave.
‘The hill of the capitol, on which we sit,’ [wrote Poggius] was formerly the head of the Roman Empire, the citadel of the earth, the terror of kings ... this spectacle of the world, how it is fallen! How changed! How defaced! The path of victory is obliterated by vines, and the benches of the senators concealed by a dunghill. Cast your eyes on the Palatine hill, and seek, among the shapeless and enormous fragments, the marble theatre, the obelisks, the colossal statues, the porticoes of Nero’s palace ... The forum of the Roman people, where they assembled to enact their laws and elect their magistrates, is now enclosed for the cultivation of pot herbs and thrown open for the reception of swine and buffaloes. The public and private edifices that were founded for eternity lie prostrate, naked, and broken, like the limbs of a mighty giant; and the ruin is the more visible from the stupendous relics that have survived the injuries of time and fortune.’
That was Edward Gibbon writing 240 years ago about Rome, tragic and broken, nearly a millennium after the destruction of its empire.
Even today, a century and a half after the Risorgimento, Rome remains ‘the limbs of a mighty giant’; ‘stupendous relics that have survived the injuries of time and fortune.’ Even within Italy, Milan has an economy twice the size of Rome’s and is a stronger cultural magnet for everything except classical remains and Catholicism. (((And spaghetti carbonara, which is a lot better in Rome than Milan, let's be fair. Also, Rome's the capital of the country, so Rome doesn't lack for politicians to make alarmed speeches about its prospects.))) And the ‘universal’ church is not what it was either – no doubt to Gibbon’s posthumous approval, since he saw Christianity as the most insidious force enfeebling Rome. I love Gibbon’s verdict on monasticism: ‘painful to the individual and useless to mankind.’ It is precisely my view of Brexit!
So London beware. Great cities, capitals of Europe no less, rise and fall. Let our grandchildren not wander around Parliament Square amid swine and buffaloes; or to a Canary Wharf overtaken by vines and pot herbs. (((That prospect frankly wouldn't surprise me too much, but it would most likely be because London is awash in rising seawater.))) Let this great Guildhall not become an architectural graveyard like the Roman Forum, while Parisians admire Nelson’s Column re-erected next to the Arc de Triomphe. (((I kinda question whether the Parisians would want to commemorate this great French naval defeats in this way.)))
By my estimation, London is the tenth capital of Europe since Athens. Only one of the other nine – Paris – remains a great city. Venice is a great museum, partially submerged. Istanbul is becoming a great prison. The other former citadels of the earth are now mostly stupendous relics. Cordova was Europe’s foremost city in the 11th century. Palermo overtook it a century later, when London was barely a large town. Grenada assumed the mantle in the 14th century, soon overtaken by Paris. In 1500 Paris was five times larger than London. The capital of England – an England then beset by civil and religious strife – was on a par with Bordeaux, Lyons, Marseille and nine Italian cities.
The stability and toleration of the long and wise reign of Elizabeth I turned London in one of Europe’s great commercial cities. The civil wars and unwisdom of Charles I and James II turned the clock back in the next two generations and it took the long-run stability and liberalism after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 for Britain and its capital city to really flourish.
Only for the last 150 years has London clearly outshone Paris, thanks to an era of French revolutions, military defeats and decadence which took the Versailles of Louis XIV to the calamities of Verdun and Vichy. (((Somehow this writes the utterly dominant Napoleonic Paris of Imperial France out of the narrative entirely, which is sort of amazing, although I guess the British have always liked to pretend that Napoleon was some weird passing fluke.)))
I say all this because Britain – and London – are at one of those critical moments when it could all start to go wrong.
Rome, Athens, Constantinople, Venice, Paris, Cordova, Grenada, Palermo, Amsterdam. All depended on the vitality of their national and international settings. The fate of Rome was sealed by the Goths and Vandals. Constantinople was doomed when the Ottomans over-ran Byzantium. Also, the walls of Constantinople were breached by gunpowder, because Constantine XI failed to modernise his city’s infrastructure.
Trade is crucial. Venice, already in decline, could not survive the commercialisation of the Cape route from Europe to the Indian Ocean.
Cultural and intellectual vitality is equally essential. Salamanca was Europe’s greatest university of the Middle Ages. The Counter Reformation turned it into a branch of the Inquisition, while the Reformation and constitutional government propelled Oxford and Cambridge – scholastic extensions of London – to the greatest heights.
Simply because London is capital of Europe now does not mean it will remain so. Only wise policy and leadership will keep it there.
Consider for a moment what has made London so great....
