Taking a pounding

London isn’t as safe or as luxe as it used to be. Top restaurants are feeling the pinch. But a few places are thriving, giving Posh Spice a whole new meaning

- VIR SANGHVI

Almost everyone you speak to will tell you that the London of today is not the same as the London of ten years ago.

What that means depends mostly on who it is you are speaking to.

If you speak to what might be described as the global rich, then most of them will be in the process of leaving the city. They are not English people and they had moved to London only because it was a nice place to live and the British government offered them great deals on income tax under what was known as the Non Doms scheme. Those tax rules have now changed, and rather than pay more tax, the rich would rather make their homes elsewhere.

I don’t think they are a great loss. There is no particular pride in being known as a city that welcomes oligarchs and Eurotrash, and London is better off without them. But a whole subculture of expensive restaurants and fancy shops had developed around the expat rich, and nearly all of these places are now in trouble, flourishing only during tourist season and seeming cold and empty the rest of the year.