Second city of the United Kingdom

Eboracum (York), the northern capital of Britannia Inferior, would have been considered the second city by virtue of its prominence in Roman times.

By the nineteenth century, the label "second city of the British Empire" had emerged and was widely applied to Dublin, the capital of Ireland.

[13][1][2][3] Edinburgh, Cardiff, and Belfast also have alternative claims due to their status as capital cities of the other home nations.

[20] Glasgow (which continues to use the title as a marketing slogan),[21][22] and (outside of Britain or Ireland) Calcutta (modern Kolkata)[23] and Philadelphia.

[24] Prior to the union with Scotland in 1707, from the English Civil War until the 18th century, Norwich was the second-largest city of the Kingdom of England, being a major trading centre, Britain's richest provincial city and county town of Norfolk, at that time the most populous county of England.

The first is the arbitrary nature of the metropolitan county boundaries, which were drawn up in the early-1970s as administrative divisions and do not necessarily reflect the present state of either conurbation.

[46] In an attempt to circumvent the first of these drawbacks, the population of each city is sometimes taken to be the contiguous built-up urban area of their respective conurbations.

[73] Since 2010, major international news providers including Reuters,[74][75] The Associated Press,[76][77] Agence France-Presse,[78][79] Bloomberg News,[80] CNN International,[81] Al Jazeera[82] and The New York Times Company[83] have all referred to Birmingham as the second city of either Britain or England, although the descriptor "second-largest city" is also frequently seen.

In 2019, an article in the New York Times suggested that both Manchester and Liverpool might lay claim to being England's cultural second city.

[84] Travel and events publications including Lonely Planet,[85] Rough Guides[86] and Time Out[87] refer to Birmingham as the second city.

A notable exception was John Prescott, former Deputy Prime Minister and Member of Parliament for the constituency of Kingston upon Hull East, who concluded a conference speech in Manchester in 2007 with the words "...Manchester – our second city", although this was later played down by his department, claiming they were made in a "light-hearted context".

[97] Prescott had previously declared Birmingham the second city while on a visit to the newly built Bullring Shopping Centre in 2003.

"[98] Most recently, MP for Solihull, Julian Knight conceded that people see Manchester as England's second city but argued that "Birmingham is bigger, more diverse and frankly a more interesting place to be."