The City of London is not noted for its beauty. Most great European cities expect their historic streets to retain visual integrity, their modern buildings to show some respect for their old. London’s planners, such as they are, have little use for such concepts. A few ancient churches cling to life in the footings of skyscrapers. The odd pub slinks nervously down a back alley. Anyone seeking historic London should look elsewhere.

Meanwhile, competition for the ugliest City building is intense, but an outright winner is in the offing. Permission has just been given for a true monster to sit over Liverpool Street Station. The speculative development, backed by Network Rail, is for a 19-storey L-shaped cliff to tower over the Great Eastern hotel on Bishopsgate. It will demolish part of a listed building, disregard a conservation area and glare out over the City’s last neighbourhood of urban dignity, Spitalfields. Its facades will be topped by bizarre moustaches of vegetation to make them look ‘green’.

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The guardianship of Britain’s historic buildings is unmistakably in retreat. The City recently swept aside the Fleet Street conservation area to give itself permission for the redevelopment of Salisbury Square. Westminster council allowed a giant glass box to destroy what used to be the Paddington conservation area. Emboldened by Sir Keir Starmer’s attacks on conservationists as nimbys and wimps, planning permissions are becoming ever more reckless. The Victorian masterpiece that was........

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