A very fine piece of polemic by Simon Jenkins about the Slab has just appeared online.  He is right that it poses a problem as to what Labour Party policy should be.  Surely not so free market, Singapore-style abolition of planning controls as the current government has favoured, whatever it says to the contrary. 

So much damage has already be done to the fabric of the city that it will be hard to knit it back together.  What happens to Smithfield Market will be a test of future policy making.  And whether the destruction of Liverpool Street Station is approved.  It was Ken Livingstone and John Prescott who liberated controls on tall building, so policy on London has been cross party.

I sometimes wonder whether it might be worth re-establishing The Royal Fine Arts Commission which had an advisory function in issues of national planning.  But it was the Blair government which abolished it because they couldn’t bear Norman St. John Stevas, its chair.  But nothing effective has replaced it.

Before the Blair government came in, Mark Fisher and Richard Rogers published A New London on what architectural policy should be, a thoughtful and influential book which is what is needed now.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/08/slab-london-monument-ugly-expensive