Dirty grey people shuffle despondently through dirty grey streets, flinching from the phlegm and fists of feral creatures lurking around the shattered remains of bus shelters, the buses rusting at the depot, undriven.

A pensioner sits on a worn settee in her draughty end terrace, slowly freezing to death in front of a gas fire with no gas, a coal fire with no coal or an electric fire with no electricity. Her grown up children can't afford to help her, as they're struggling to survive themselves, their jobs having moved to Bangalore, Shanghai, Seoul. They'll never work again, nor will their children.

England is dead.

Meanwhile, a hundred miles to the south, there is a bustling, thriving city state, with connections to New York, Delhi, Beijing, Tokyo and Singapore, shops full of the latest i-brains and personal grooming assistants, a smart new transit system replacing the worn out underground railway. There are rough parts here and there, of course, but they are gradually being improved by the efforts of the Senators who are determined to make the Republic of London a nation worthy of its name. It was great before, it is great now, and it shall continue to be great, now that the parasitic rump of a dead empire has been abandoned to find its own way in a Darwinian world of lean city states and bloated former nation states.

English migrant workers stand at the gates of the republic, begging to be let in, but immigration rules are strict, and very few have the skills or the drive to make decent lives for themselves in the republic. Immigrants from overseas, on the other hand, are welcomed with open arms. They work harder, ask for less money, aren't as prone to whining, drinking on the job and going on strike. There are occasional rumours of desperate English wetbacks drowning in the Thames, but they never make the news. The citizens of London try not to think about the 30 million people living in the filthy, crime-ridden shanty town that lies between Enfield and Gretna.

As the Atlantic world loses ground to growing powers in Asia, is this a viable future for the city of London? Could London revive itself by going alone, ditching the rest of England and establishing itself as a city state? What arguments could be proposed in favour of such a move? What arguments are there against it?

What do you think? Could we ever see a Republic of London emerge from the remains of the United Kingdom?

Have you been reading Charles Dickens again?

I've never got past the first paragraph...

DB - you should be marking

Worry no more; the BBC is moving CBeebies to Salford. The tide is turning.

London over rest of England any day.

Fixed that for ya!

Well, it is a long first paragraph!

Did Paul Weller write this? sounds like an old `Jam` song.

Sorry i'm from old london and don't have the attention span to read all that.

You know how the Beatles burst onto the scene, different, groundbreaking, different hair, young, simple but energetic and universally popular with fans and critics alike....

....then they moved to India, found a yogi and started taking drugs and getting weird and nobody could quite understand how "Yellow Submarine" could be written by the same genius as "I saw her standing there"....

Did something happen to you up there in Glarus? Do we need to rescue you from the clutches of an Indian mystic or are you experimenting with horticultural enhancements?

Perhaps you watched "V for Vendetta", "Children of men" and " The Handmaid's Tale" one right after the other ?

You've been talking to that Dick Whittington haven't you? You shouldn't believe a word he says. He's nothing but a bull$hitter. Told me the streets were paved with gold. All I saw were pavements stained with chewing gum.

Ugh! The first is one of the worst films I've ever seen, the second one of the worst books I've ever read. I'm not sure I should even think about the third...

I'm curious, though: would it be economically viable for London to go it alone? (I know similar questions have been asked about California before now)

No, I don't think it would. "City states" are very rarely viable without a massive daily influx of labour which isn't rich enough to live therein but is needed to support the jobs that the city dwellers won't do (eg Monaco, where the roads to France are clogged twice a day). Also, cities don't have enough economic diversity to sustain themselves for a long time - no manufacturing or resources.

California is different in that it could have a self standing economy as it has the scale and diversity to do so

It would certainly be a good thing for all those green and pleasant meadows that stock brokers are building houses over as the city sprawls further and further and further into the Cotswolds and the further reaches of the London Borough of Shrewsbury. Ring-fence them in I say, and gun down anyone who tries to get out. L*****ers

I have been banging on for years that London should devolve to the regions. Many of the workers in London are administrators, and could easily move to Sunderland, Sheffield, Nottingham or even West Bromwich. The government has moved many jobs to Newcastle (Pensions) and Wales (Driving) but more needs to be done.

So my answer is no, much of London is maintained by the rest of the country, and the regions need London's expertise. They are each dependent on each other.

I am a Londoner, my parents and sister live there, but I have never worked in London, and I also love the regional towns and countryside just as much. On two recent visits I was impressed on how much things have improved over 10 years. Immediately after Thatcher things were grim, but improvements are there to be seen. http://www.londonandpartners.com/med...ns-of-recovery and 14 million visitors in 2009 can't be wrong!

Samuel Johnson's London wasn't very clean either http://www.samueljohnson.com/tiredlon.html When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.

You mean there IS something North of Enfield?? Well I learn something new every day...

there you go

I gave up after the first dozen words. Too much hyperbole for my liking.