Taming The Griffins

Even if there are those who say that they are really dragons.

Since 1999, I have been a Parish Councillor where there are about nine thousand people in an area which, excluding outlying hamlets and farms, is about one mile square. I am pleased to say that we have lots of businesses. But there is absolutely no suggestion that those businesses should have votes, still less that those votes should be greater than the votes of real people.

The City of London needs a City Council, a London Borough as the City of Westminster already is, with each ward electing three Councillors as elsewhere in London, and with each year's Chairman serving as Lord Mayor. An ideal opportunity to use the system that we all urgently need for municipal elections above Parish or Town level, whereby each of us would vote for one candidate and the requisite number, never fewer than two, would be declared elected at the end.

All the pageantry and all the charity could and should remain. Such an inheritance is very common in local government. Have you ever been to Durham? The City could remain its own ceremonial county, since the link between those and municipal arrangements was cut all the way back when an unprotesting Margaret Thatcher was in the Cabinet.

And the existing wealth of the Corporation, a fine old word for this sort of thing, would also be retained, in addition to normal sources of funding. Do they pay business rates in the City? They do not seem to pay very much else. But they would. For there would be no more state within the State. Still less any inability to tell which was which.