Karmic payback for a UK city the crisis killed

The recorded commentary of Birmingham's Ferris wheel used to announce: "Ici, L'Arc de Triomphe," lifting fun-seekers high above the city. This legacy of the ride's previous location - Paris - amused locals surveying urban sprawl rather than the Champs Elysees. But up to 1,000 HSBC staff set to relocate from London will need a better guide to a city rebounding from a deep downturn.

Birmingham had a spring in its step even before the bank decided to move its UK operation there. More Londoners in their thirties flee the capital's high house prices and hectic lifestyle for Birmingham than for any other UK city. Output increased 4.2 per cent in 2013, more than twice the national average.

The recovery is from a low base. The economic crisis incubated partly in the City of London wreaked worse damage on the industrial West Midlands than any UK region except Yorkshire and Northern Ireland. By 2009, the percentage of workers claiming unemployment benefit was the highest in the country.

When I became the Financial Times Midlands correspondent in 2000, the blue-collar suburb of Washwood Heath was home to three big factories employing 2,100 staff. By 2009 they had all closed. The ritual would begin with a local jobs campaigner dressed as John Bull camping outside. It would end with a hasty press conference. "When John Bull turns up, you feel worried," one redundant executive said. "When the man from the FT appears too, you know you're doomed."

The recession hastened the demise of some unfit companies. But a collapse in bank funding in 2009 also killed viable companies. Even the future of Jaguar Land Rover - active just outside Birmingham proper - was in doubt. The luxury vehicle maker is now an exports powerhouse. It is owned by India's Tata, run brilliantly by a German chief executive and builds some of its cars at a plant that once made Spitfires, the fighter aircraft that defeated the Luftwaffe.

Banks such as HSBC that create jobs in Birmingham are paying karmic reparations for the damage the financial crisis did to the city. Their business rationale is sound, too. Birmingham is an hour and 20 minutes by train from London, a journey time that will fall to 45 minutes following track upgrades by 2026. There is a hiring pool of about 100,000 financial and professional staff who work for lower average pay than Londoners.

Birmingham fights a "tallest dachshund" contest Manchester for the mantle of Britain's second city. The conurbations have roughly the same size and economic heft. But a division of labour is emerging, with Manchester as the service centre for northern England and Birmingham mopping up overspill from overheated London.

Many HSBC staff will seek new jobs in London rather than uproot their families. Middle-class Londoners often have a reflexive contempt for Birmingham. They denigrate a jolie laide city big enough to boast world-class cultural institutions but small enough that even its outer reaches can come to feel familiar, in way London's vastness precludes.

In January, a Fox News commentator claimed parts of Birmingham were no-go areas for non-Muslims. The council, with characteristic Midlands phlegm, described the comments as "bonkers". Birmingham has many Asian citizens and it is true some could integrate better, but a growing non-white population supports the city's status as one of the youngest in Europe.

Critics often deploy this quote from Jane Austen: "One has no great hopes of Birmingham. I always say there is something direful in the sound [of its name]." They miss the author's satirical point. The words issue from the mouth of Mrs Elton, an ignorant snob.

Commentators dismissive of the city, ranging from writer Kenneth Tynan to erstwhile Top Gear star Jeremy Clarkson, risk falling into the same trap.

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