The Financial Times carried a curious story at the weekend about ‘the secretive process to elect the Lord Mayor of London’ being ‘thrown into disarray’ by ‘objections from some City leaders’ to the candidacy, for 2022, of Nick Lyons — who has just been elected as one of the City’s two sheriffs but who happens to be an Irish citizen. Lyons’s unnamed opposers say City rules have always required the Lord Mayor to be a British citizen. The City Corporation, the Square Mile’s local authority, says it has legal advice to the effect that Lyons is not disqualified, EU citizens being permitted to stand in UK local elections. The FT omitted to mention Vincent Keaveny, the senior alderman who is expected to succeed as Lord Mayor this autumn and who describes himself as ‘a proud Irishman’ with dual citizenship.
You may think City governance is a medieval closed-shop and it really doesn’t matter who wears the ceremonial robes from one year to the next.
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