Almost half of the 100 people who will take seats on the Common Council of the City of London following this week’s elections will have done so without facing any challengers.
Fourteen of the Square Mile’s 25 wards, which are represented by between two and six council members, have only the same number of candidates as Guildhall seats available, guaranteeing that all the candidates nominated for those wards will be elected.
In the previous Common Council elections, held in 2022 – delayed by a year late due to the pandemic – six wards went uncontested.
Candidates facing no competition this time include current policy chair Chris Hayward, effectively the council leader, and Shravan Joshi, chair of the local authority’s powerful planning committee.
The Corporation’s unique electoral system means it’s not just City residents missing out on the chance to exercise a choice at polling stations. Along with the 8,600 people living in the Square Mile, City workers are registered to vote by their employers in numbers based on the size of their workforces.
For businesses of up to 50 people, one voter is selected for every five workers. For those with more than 50 people, ten voters are chosen plus one more for every additional 50. Between them, these voters make up about two-thirds of the electorate.
This entitlement applies to companies, sole traders, partnerships and other bodies, including charities, churches and hospitals, with a physical base in the City. These business electors cast their votes as individuals and the franchise is designed to ensure that the preferences of the roughly 680,000 people who work in the Square Mile are reflected in the Common Council’s composition.
However, the number of non-contests this year means that attendance at many of the traditional “wardmotes” – local eve of poll meetings to quiz the candidates – may be disappointing, despite the traditional proclamations issued by the Guildhall’s tricorne-hatted and mace-bearing ward beadles:
“Oyez, Oyez, Oyez. All manner of persons who have anything to do at this Court of Wardmote…draw near and give your attendance. God Save the King.”
Luckily the beadles no longer have the power to fine non-attendees.
Another quirk in the Common Council voting system is voters are exempt from the requirement recently imposed for all other UK elections to produce photographic ID at polling stations.
It may all look rather quaint for a local authority whose remit is extremely wide, extending well beyond the the Square Mile boundary. What happens there matters in the rest of London and across the country.
As well as the usual council services, the Guildhall runs its own police force and plays a significant role in supporting and promoting its lucrative business sector. When it comes to backing the Square Mile, it has considerable clout.
The shape of the City skyline is largely within its purview and it is responsible for five Thames bridges and four private schools along with, lately controversially, the historic Smithfield, Billingsgate and New Spitalfields markets, the last two of which lie outside its boundaries.
Also further afield, its responsibilities include Hampstead Heath, Epping Forest, Highgate Wood, Queen’s Park and West Ham Park, ten academy schools and, surprisingly, the Heathrow animal reception centre. Much of its activity, over and above routine council functions, is funded from significant endowments going back some 800 years, with assets approaching £3 billion in 2023.
The City Corporation was once seen as anachronistic and anomalous at best by Labour, and reforming or even abolishing it was a regular clarion call. When shadow chancellor, London MP John McDonnell pledged to scrap what he called the “last bastion of the undemocratic business vote”.
But that opposition has dwindled, and Sir Sadiq Khan firmly rejected abolition calls in 2016. The corporation, said a City Hall spokesperson, “is the City’s bedrock, playing an historic and vital role representing business. Any suggestion that the Corporation should be abolished is ridiculous and clearly not in the interests of London.”
Labour currently holds five Common Council seats and is standing 13 candidates this time, with a notably high-profile ground campaign being mounted in Vintry ward by public affairs big hitters Jon McLeod and Mark Glover.
Apart from Labour’s forays, the corporation has been untouched by explicit party politics, with all other councillors running as Independents. This time round, 45 such candidates are already sure of their seats. This may not be the finest hour of the “oldest continuous municipal democracy in the UK”.
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