This article is taken from the August-September 2024 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

---

Some years ago, Sir Mark Boleat got a call from the Treasury. George Osborne, Boleat was informed, wanted to host an event to commemorate the four-hundredth anniversary of the first meeting of the Treasury Board. And when, Boleat wondered, was the last meeting? “Oh,” came the reply. “About 390 years ago, we think.” 

At that, the chair of the Policy and Resources Committee at the City of London Corporation knew just what to say. 

“And the Chancellor would like to have this splendid dinner that he would host in the Guildhall?”

“Yes, Mark, he would.” 

“And he’d like the City to pay for it, wouldn’t he?”

“Yes, Mark, he would! You’re very clever today!” 

“So we hosted it,” Boleat tells me, adding that the whole affair cost £30,000. 

Such partnerships would be impossible for other local authorities — but the City of London Corporation is different. It may, like borough councils around the capital, run libraries and bin collections. But in its labyrinthine functions, ancient institutions and unusual relationship with central government, it is not only incomparable to them but also to any other form of government in the modern world. 

The Corporation’s durability is remarkable. Already half a millennium old when Shakespeare arrived in London, its supporters see the survival of its rights and institutions as crucial to its modern success. Critics view the endurance of such traditions as precisely the problem, differing only over whether they can be reformed or must be abolished.

Yet as Boleat’s dinner so vividly implies, the Corporation’s role and endurance is plausibly just about money.

✸

The City of London Corporation is older than Parliament. Although its first surviving charter dates to 1067, its roots pre-date the Norman Conquest. It runs the City of London as it always has, through a governance structure that remains strikingly pre-modern. First assuming legislative functions in the fourteenth century, the Court of Common Council has 100 members. The Court of Aldermen, made up of 25 representatives, is so old it has sat since the “time immemorial” of before Henry II’s English legal system started in 1189. 

The City’s 25 wards are equally ancient. Each possessing an alder and a number of councillors depending on population, their names (Vintry, Cripplegate) and size (Bassishaw is just a few streets) speak to a lost world of muddy lanes and cowl-headed merchants. The Lord Mayor, now a largely ceremonial role, is ritually elected by 111 livery companies, successors to the medieval guilds. 

The City Corporation has net assets of £1.8bn — plus a £2.8bn endowment fund

Over the centuries, the Corporation has accrued far more functions than the average local authority. Michael Cassidy, a veteran City official, highlights the City Bridge Foundation, which maintains several bridges across the Thames, and which was established by royal charter in 1282. You can spot the Corporation’s distinctive logo in countless other places, from parks such as Epping Forest, wholesale markets, including Billingsgate and a swimming pool (Parliament Hill Lido), as well as police cars, animal import offices and even a crematorium. 

More recently, the Corporation has also become cheerleaders of the Square Mile as a world financial centre. The Lord Mayor travels on government trade delegations — Dr Ian Stone, a historian, characterises him as practically an adjunct of the Foreign Office — whilst his employees publish leaflets on what the Square Mile can offer investors. 

✸

Huw Martin knows he’s lucky to live at the Barbican. “I come from a place of real privilege,” the 28-year-old Cheshire software developer stresses, “being able to live here paying for luxury.” His bins are taken out every weekday morning. His local library is well-appointed. He doesn’t drive — but if he did, he could park somewhere with a dedicated concierge. 

Walking to the Tube, he has less reason to fear for his phone, given crime in the City is 72 per cent lower than the London average. At about £91 a month, even Martin’s council tax is half what he’d previously paid in Hackney. Even the Corporation’s critics concede that it does the basics well. “I perceive the City as a benevolent landlord,” concedes Adam Hogg, chair of the Barbican housing association. “They’re not going to cheat me.” 

Is the nature of the Corporation’s successful record of delivering services because of or despite its unique institutions? Consider, for instance, the long habit of avoiding party politics. There are now some Labour members, but most sit as independents, something Cassidy says forces them to “put forward the merits” of their arguments without caucusing. 

Then there’s the Corporation’s electorate, encompassing 6,500 residential voters alongside around 25,000 “business voters” largely chosen from amongst City workers. Given 615,000 people commute into the Square Mile each day, Cassidy suggests this is a “marvellous way” to be set up. Paul Jagger, for his part, mentions ward clubs. Bringing together councillors, residents, parishioners and workers to discuss local issues, the liveryman and City expert says they encourage “very personal” relationships between stakeholders and elected officials.

Whatever the advantages of the ward clubs, however, you get the sense that what the City excels at could nevertheless be understood in a single word: funding. “I won’t say that we had unlimited money,” says Boleat, who served as the Corporation’s Policy and Resources Committee chair (and de facto leader) from 2012-17. “But we had several hundred million of our own money to spend as we wished.” 

Fair enough: the Corporation currently has net assets of £1.8bn. That’s more than £200,000 per head and doesn’t include a £2.8bn endowment fund known as “City’s Cash”. The equivalent maths in Tower Hamlets would leave people with £10,000 per head. City accounts are doubtless bolstered by the fact that there are so few inhabitants, many of whom are rich: just 5.6 per cent receive out-of-work benefits, compared to 12.3 per cent across the capital. 

Beyond the concierge parking, the Corporation has also flexed its fiscal muscles to support the financial City. A striking example came in 1993, when an IRA bomb wrecked several buildings near Bishopsgate. Though the explosion happened on a Saturday, the Corporation successfully relocated every affected firm by the start of business on Monday. That is echoed by more recent schemes. Between free wifi and complimentary property advice for foreign businesses, the Corporation has undoubtedly played a part in turning the Square Mile into an economic titan, one which now encompasses almost 20 per cent of London’s economy.

✸

In 2015, after a long career in the City, Graeme Harrower decided to enter politics. Soon enough, the retired tax lawyer was a councillor for Bassishaw. But if he’d hoped his new colleagues would display the kind of expertise and professionalism he’d seen in his day job, Harrower would quickly be disappointed. “When I became a City councillor after working in the financial City for three decades,” he explains, “I expected most other elected members to have a similar background, but most didn’t. Some were aspiring national politicians who never made the big time.”

Harrower, who left City government in 2022, isn’t alone. For if the gutters are clean and the streets secure, some nonetheless fret about the Square Mile’s rulers. To an extent, unease stems from the Corporation’s institutions, starting with elections. Residents live in a handful of wards, centred around the Barbican and the Golden Lane Estate. Though democracy there is buoyant enough — Barnaby Spurrier of Barbican Quarter Action says he’s “really impressed” by his councillors — in other areas the business vote is king. 

This isn’t necessarily a problem. Firms receive votes based on the number of people they employ, but are encouraged to spread them across the corporate hierarchy, with individual workers free to support who they like. Jagger says his wife, a PA at a law firm, has been offered a vote several times. 

In practice, however, low turnouts and uncontested votes breed complacency. By strict medieval law, alders are elected for life. But by convention, they serve six years before putting themselves up for re-election. Last year, however, the former Lord Mayor Nicholas Lyons stayed in post for longer, arguing that other alders supported a six-month extension. 

“It is never reasonable, in any circumstances, for anyone who has been elected to public office to be in that office more than one day beyond their elected term, let alone another six months,” says serving alder, Martha Grekos. “No alder has a democratic right to extend the term of any alder beyond six years — because the alders are not the voters.” It hardly helps, Grekos adds, that when she raised this concern, only one other alder came to her aid. (Approached via the Corporation’s press office, Lyons didn’t respond to a request for comment.)

 

Notwithstanding the lack of party politics, a significant number of male councillors are Freemasons, and Harrower suggests this creates a secretive and stifling corporate culture. That aside, there are surely financial reasons to avoid trouble. There are ample opportunities for formal feasting, allowances and other privileges. Regardless of how much work they do — and some, Boleat admits, do very little — councillors and alders can visit the Guildhall Club for subsidised meals. They can even sleep in a subsidised hotel.

If that hints at the challenges of stretching a wealthy antique canvas over a modern political frame, there are other worries too. Whatever the theoretical logic of lending voice to City workers, Hogg says that the business vote undermines the rights of actual inhabitants. “We have these 100 councillors,” he says, “of which 25 represent residents. And essentially, the City business vote always wins.”

Simple arithmetic shapes the Corporation’s priorities. Slowed by bloated committees, even simple tasks like window cleaning can take months, whilst Golden Lane residents grumble about poor ventilation and mould. “Why,” asks Grekos, “should the Corporation spend hundreds of thousands of pounds more on its members when it won’t find the money — which it has — to do a timely renovation of its scandalously neglected social housing estates or invest in future social and civic infrastructure projects for the betterment of the City?”

Money can have other dramatic consequences too, especially when it comes to building. With a planning approval rate of 99.8 per cent, most recently a controversial development near the Barbican, the City’s skyline is a rebuke to NIMBYs everywhere. Cassidy sees these projects as central to the Corporation’s mission, highlighting the “phenomenal success” it’s had transforming the fusty pinstriped City into a global financial centre. 

A reasonable point: apart from contributing a fifth of London’s income, the Square Mile now generates £97bn annually for the national coffers. Yet when the Corporation sometimes owns the land earmarked for new offices and with City officials sometimes boasting interests in real estate, Hogg claims that they “believe they can derive benefit” from waving the bulldozers on. 

✸

In a sense, these battles strike at the heart of what the Corporation is. Straddling the mundane work of borough councils and the glamour of high finance, councillors must sometimes choose between the two. Yet if some prefer double cognacs to double glazing, that only makes the City’s longevity even more remarkable. 

There has been no shortage of outsiders hoping to reform the Corporation. In the 1680s, Charles II forced it to temporarily accept a restrictive charter. It was also targeted by the Victorians and New Labour. How, then, has it persisted? 

Pre-dating any other surviving form of representative government in England and gathering its authority piecemeal over centuries, it’s never truly been squeezed into that rickety barrel named the British constitution.

In this it differs from continental Europe’s history of city government. The closest cousins to the Corporation are arguably the Swiss guilds. Yet if towns like Basel still retain dozens of medieval social clubs, Andreas Hunziker of the Guild of Tanners stresses that Napoleonic reforms mean they “don’t have the political power” they once did. 

It surely helps, Stone adds, that its spider’s web of inherited functions, spanning everything from bridges to parks, now makes the Corporation tricky to abolish in practice. At the same time, its persistence has given the City special opportunities to defend its position. A case in point is the so-called Remembrancer, a role dating to the sixteenth century and essentially the City’s lobbyist in Parliament. 

In theory, the Remembrancer’s movements in the Palace of Westminster are severely constrained. But Lord Maurice Glasman, a City watcher and Labour peer, tells me that during a debate on reforming the Corporation, he spotted the Remembrancer strolling into the House of Commons and briefing the relevant minister. Tradition has gifted the Corporation with other chances to sway the powers that be, notably the Chancellor’s annual Mansion House speech to the City. 

But despite its unique constitutional status, Parliament could still crush the Corporation tomorrow. Perhaps for this reason, it’s periodically tolerated some mild reforms. Under Tony Blair, it tweaked the business vote to include more firms. In 2020, an independent review by Lord Lisvane proposed shrinking committees and forcing companies to dole out their votes to workers, potentially strengthening electoral mandates. 

Even for sceptics like Hogg, implementing Lisvane’s report would soften much of his opposition to the City. An admirer of his country’s constitutional foibles, Glasman wants to see the wards cleaned up and expanded across London. Yet incremental change isn’t for everyone. “Most City workers,” argues Harrower, “wouldn’t notice if the Corporation was abolished — indeed most of them have hardly heard of it. As for things the Corporation does that need doing, all would be better done by others.” 

Whatever the Corporation’s faults, drastic upheaval seems unlikely — and not merely because of its tangled functions and ambiguous constitutional status. As so often, the crucial issue is money. Cassidy says it’s long been able to deliver “useful services” to politicians. In 2012, for example, the Corporation supported the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Pageant along the Thames. After Margaret Thatcher’s funeral, it opened the Guildhall as a reception space. 

Then there is philanthropy. Apart from maintaining the Thames crossings, the City Bridge Foundation awards over £30m a year to London charities. At the same time, the Corporation intervenes when other corners of local government flounder: in 1989, after the abolition of the Greater London Council, it absorbed Hampstead Heath.

City insiders are remarkably frank about what this munificence entails. At a dinner for new councillors, Boleat recalls one member wondering what they got in return for all their good deeds. A colleague chimed in: “We’re allowed to exist.” 

Sadiq Khan has called the Corporation the “bedrock” of the City and conscious, perhaps, about where the political winds are blowing, Boleat seems equally enthusiastic about putting the Corporation’s munificence at the disposal of the Starmer government. His reassuring message to Labour is: “The City of London is there to be milked as much as you want it.” In short, the alders and councillors seem safe for now.