The London my young children are growing up in today is very different to the one I grew up in in the 1970s, and the one that greeted my parents when they arrived here from foreign shores in the post-war years. It is not the city of opportunity and aspiration it was when my father came here in 1956. Then, he was able to buy a house for £6,000 and find work and my mother was given the opportunity to learn new skills which enabled her, too, to gain employment. Those kind of opportunities are simply no longer there for many people growing up in the capital. Today, 640,000 Londoners are in low paid jobs, one in four young people are unemployed and the average age of a first time house buyer is set to rise to an astonishing 52 years old.

I don’t need to tell readers of Red…