Londoners hate London; South Westerners love the South West (maybe)

Twitter has been grouching this week about journalists saying their life is better now they’ve moved out of London.

Being grumpy about people leaving London fits the stereotype of Londoners rather well – particularly when they secretly want to leave too. But do Londoners actually want to quit the capital?

Helpfully, Opinium asked something like this in their “Britain Uncovered” poll for the Guardian earlier this year. And yes, Londoners are indeed the most likely to say they’d least like to live in the place they currently do. Just.

Ignore this chart. It's just margin of error.

My other favourite stereotype-reinforcing finding from the poll is from the question on quality of life. People in the South-West really do think they have it better than everyone else (by miles).

This one, however, is not MoE

Boring words of warning: the poll wasn’t weighted at the regional level so it’s not a representative sample. And the sample sizes aren’t that big: dipping to 41 for the region with the fewest respondents (Wales). So you really can’t conclude from the poll that Londoners most want to leave. It’s well within the margin of error, and the weighting adds further uncertainty. The second chart probably stands up, though.

Still, as long as we don’t look too closely, it seems that Londoners really do hate London and South Westerners are indeed smug living the good life. Maybe.

Share

Comments are closed.