99.82% of London isn't London

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]There are lots of things that we would consider to be in London that actually can't be in London at all. For example, neither of these are actually in London.

[00:00:10]Trafala Square, not London. London Eye, not in London. Big Ben, [music] not London. In fact, it's in an entirely different city. And it all comes down to a deal made in 1066 that was so good for London that no one, no monarch or government since, has been able to undo it. Which leaves us with a bit of a conundrum.

[00:00:30]What do we call London? There are lots of places generally considered to be London, including but not limited to the city of London, which is the cause of all of this mess, and 32 glorious London burs. There's Barking and Dagnum and Barnett and Brent, Beexley and Brmley, though that's almost Kent. Gordon's debatable, but Camden's quite central.

[00:00:49]From Eling to Enfield, the commute would be mental. Then Greenwich is home to Greenwich meantime, and Hackne's been judified, so now there's less crime.

[00:00:54]Having Hillington Harrow and Haringay Hammersmith and Fulham I'll speed up we've not got all day. Hounds low and Islington Lambeath and Lewisham Kingston on temps upon temps for some reason.

[00:01:02]There's Merton and Newham and Westminster too. Kensington and Chelsea's a rich people zoo.

[00:01:06]Redbridgeidge Richmond and Southern has Shakespeare and Sutton has Sutton I guess. I've not been there. Wsworth's got prison. So watch what you do.

[00:01:12]Waltham forest tower hamlets. That's all 32. And all of these are grouped together into something called greater London. Greater London is a county in the same way as Essex and Kent. It is not a city but encircled by the county of London is a city which is called the city of London. And considering that all of the cities in the UK are officially known as the city of I think we can consider this officially London. But the city of London isn't in the county of London. It's its own county entirely.

[00:01:43]But there is a city bigger than London inside the county of Greater London and that's Westminster. And between the two cities, you would think that the world famous city of London would be the bigger one, but it's actually not.

[00:01:57]Westminster is about 22 times the size of London. London only has around 9,000 residents. Compare that to the city of Westminster with around 200,000 residents and the county of Greater London with around 9 million residents.

[00:02:10]And things are starting to look rather messy. If we look at the actual list of biggest cities in the UK, you've got Sheffield, Manchester, Glasgow, Leeds, and Birmingham, but no London. Not only is London not at the top of the list, but it's 9,000 residents makes it the smallest city in England, even smaller than Wells in Somerset. This is going to sound very London of me, but if Birmingham's allowed to have a million residents, and why is London only allowed 9,000, is it really that exclusive? And why not just make a new city and call it London and make it contained the whole of Greater London?

[00:02:43]Well, let's go and explore some of London's wellpreserved history. The city of London is the original Roman settlement of just one square mile. It started off as Londinium. What that meant is anyone's guess. And it was marked by an almost 2,000-year-old stone wall, part of which is gracefully preserved in this car park.

[00:03:04]But this is where things get weird. In 1066, the Normans came over and invaded the country. They needed London on their side. So, William the Conqueror came up with a treaty that basically said, "You can keep all of your laws and customs and carry on doing what you're doing, and we won't interfere." To underscore this point, he founded the Tower of London right on the doorstep of the city. The thing is that there was never any expiry date to this deal. So, for every government, every monarch since, the city has been able to essentially do what it wants because William the Conqueror told them they could. and the city is so powerful that no one's ever challenged them. That's got to be one of the best deals ever. At least if you're London. So, as of right now, and possibly forever, this one's in London, but this isn't. These two buildings are, but the shard not in London. And stepping over the border, you might not immediately realize just how different things are in the city compared to the rest of the UK. So, what does this deal look like a thousand years on? was a lot more visible than you'd think. But first, today is the hottest day of the year so far and everywhere is absolutely rammed. So, I'm going to hydrate with today's sponsor, Holi. I sometimes forget to hydrate throughout the day.

[00:04:13]And since I've been drinking Holi, which has been since the beginning of the year, I have been drinking a lot, which sounds bad, but it Holy, I've been drinking Holi. [laughter] Holy is basically a healthier alternative to regular soft drinks. They have iced teas, hydration drinks, and they've got energy drinks. It's a sunny day. I'm going to have the lemon hydration drink. These are sugar-free.

[00:04:34]They've filled with electrolytes and minerals. You just mix your sache in, shake it up. That's really nice. It is the perfect day for this flavor. I'm thirsty. If you've not tried holi before, I'd recommend going with one of the starter kits. And you can try lots of different flavors and then pick the ones you like most. Upgrade to the tubs like I've done. If you want to try Holy for yourself, you can use my code Luke OS5 for5 off your first order or just use the code Luke OS for 10% off in general. So today, the city of London is kind of weird because it's the smallest city in England by population, but at the same time, half a million people commute to it daily and it generates 109 billion pounds annually. That's bigger than a lot of countries. As a result, the city of London is distinctly different to most of what we would consider London today. It's not governed by a council, but by a medieval institution that predates Parliament itself. It's called the City of London Corporation, and it never got absorbed into the modern state, so it's got a bit more flexibility than most councils. For example, they have their own police force. They've got their own mayor, who is more senior than the mayor of London.

[00:05:43]The mayor of London actually has no power over the city. Companies can vote alongside people in elections based on how many people work for the company.

[00:05:52]They don't even have to give the people who work for the company a say in who the company votes for. They just get their voting power by them working at the company. Then with almost no residents to object, their sole focus is money. So there's a lot of tall buildings in a very small area. You also can't film on a street without permission like you can in the rest of the UK.

[00:06:14]Don't tell anyone. If you think that's unusual, no British monarch is allowed to formally enter the city of London without first asking permission. So, if the king wanted to formally enter the city of London today, he would need to first stop at the temple bar here behind me. Here, the king will meet the Lord Mayor, who will present him with the pearl sword, which is a symbol of the city's authority. The king will then hand it back and be allowed to enter the city. Then, every time there's a new monarch, the city will reconfirm its special relationship with the crown.

[00:06:44]It's kind of funny that the king has to ask permission to formally enter the capital city of his own country because of a deal that a Norman duke made a thousand years ago that was never changed. Over the years, new areas started popping up around it and they all became known colloquially as London, especially as they all started to merge back together. In total of the whole London metropolitan area today, 99.82% of it isn't in actual London. And the city doesn't care. The city doesn't actually want to expand. It doesn't need to. Its power comes from being small and contained. If it were to expand, it would be much more difficult to maintain its medieval charter with 9 million people under its jurisdiction. And when it comes to the idea of the county of Greater London just absorbing the city of London, the city has always opposed this on the same grounds, leaving all of this without a name and except for Westminster, without any sort of official city status. So, if we can't beat them and we can't join them, then we're left with a few options. We could create a new city and give it a new name, which would be weird cuz everyone already refers to it as London. We could create a new city but give it the same name, which would also be weird because then you would have the city of London contained in a city called London. Or we could do what we did, which is this, create the county of London, which I did in 1889. And from 1922, it was based in this building here, which is now home to the London Dungeons and Shreks Adventure. This way, everyone who thought they were living in London actually was living in London, just the county and not the city. But when they expanded the county in 1965, they changed the name in Great British fashion to Greater London.

[00:08:30]One can assume they named that because it was bigger than it was before and it would have been confusing to have the county of London just expand to cover places that weren't previously the county of London. Or maybe just because calling a county London when it didn't actually contain actual London was weird. The funny thing is that for a while we'd actually solved this. From 1999 to 2020 there was a single unified London political entity. It was the name of our European Parliamentary constituency and it covered all of the areas that we would think of as London.

[00:08:59]The problem was then we left the EU and so now there's no more London. A strange problem that this creates is that the center of London isn't technically in London. At least not anymore.

[00:09:11]Historically, the center of London has always been in the city. From something called the London Stone to the Bank of England. But if you ask most people today, that's probably not where they'd say the center of London is including the government. For central greater London, you'd be looking at here in Charing Cross, which is the point from which all signs that point to London are measured. So, if you're driving and you see a sign that says 50 mi to London, that's 50 mi to, well, specifically the top of this statue here. It's also home to Trafalga Square, which a lot of tourists would consider to be central London. But it's important to note that the official center of London is not actually in a city called London at all.

[00:09:54]If not for a deal struck by the Normans in 1066, we would probably today have a London that housed around 9 or 10 million people and roughly matched the boundaries of the county of Greater London today. Instead, we've got a London that houses 9,000 people and can never expand. Then we've got a newer city called Westminster, which weirdly houses the official center of the neighboring city of London. And then we've got a county called Greater London, which houses around 9 million people, as well as the city of Westminster, but not the city of London itself. All because the Normans made a deal that no one dares to touch. So next time any of you who live just inside the M25 get told you don't live in London, you can clap back and say, "Actually, neither do you.

[00:10:41]Unless they're one of the 9,000, in which case >> I didn't home then.