Dependencies No More?

When the United Kingdom exercises its right of self-determination by declaring its independence of the British Overseas Territories, including the several tax havens in the Caribbean, then what will become of the tax havens in the English Channel and in the Irish Sea?

The Crown Dependencies ought each to be required to hold a referendum with two options on the ballot paper.

One option would be incorporation into the United Kingdom, with the existing legislatures remaining in place as devolved bodies, with the Royal Titles Act amended to include "Duke of Normandy" or "Lord of Man", and so on.

The other option would be independence. There would be no Third Way. One would hope for the first option to be preferred.

That would constitute and effect the retention of the High Court of Tynwald, of the States of Jersey, of the States of Guernsey, and subject to that last of the States of Alderney and of the Chief Pleas of Sark.

But all fully subject to the Parliament of the United Kingdom in which those bodies' electors were in turn represented.

Thus would be set the pattern for the assertion of that sovereignty over the Corporation of the City of London.

The successful reform of the Chief Pleas of Sark, which until 2008 was Europe's last feudal state, ought to make very easy indeed the successful reform of Europe's last Medieval republican oligarchy.

By, especially, the abolition of the requirement of admission to membership of a public school drinking club in order to seek election to one's local authority, and by the abolition of votes for businesses, indeed of more votes for businesses than for people.

At least 30 of the 7,375 inhabitants of the City of London have managed to put Sadiq Khan, Siân Berry and George Galloway onto the ballot paper for Mayor of London.

Not many wards that size could nominate all three of a Labour, a Green and a Respect candidate for the Council. It is evident, then, that the City is a considerably more than averagely left-wing place.

We may therefore look forward to an end to the situation in which 99 out of 100 members of the Court of Common Council are the Tory Independents whom one tends to associate with very rural areas, but who have ruled the City since time immemorial.

All that this will take will be an end to the literal and metaphorical Freemasonry.