What’s going wrong in Bristol?

When a man is tired of London, he just needs to relocate to Bristol — or so the stream of westbound émigrés would suggest. Each year, hundreds up sticks and flee the capital in search of its laid-back lifestyle.

Bristol prides itself on being the chilled-out alternative to the big smoke — a bit like Brighton, but further west and therefore cooler. Here they swap the ruthless capitalism of their blowhard cousins in London for giant water slides, balloon festivals and radical street art. But the city is still chippy about London’s cultural dominance.

I grew up in south Bristol, and went to the same school as its most famous export, the graffiti artist Banksy. Banksy’s caustic barbs — against politicians, priests and bankers — are a miniature snow globe of Bristolian attitudes. Ours is a radical city, the narrative goes, a repudiation of the square bureaucrats and businessmen in London.