The Corporation of the City of London is the pet anachronism of the capital’s finance industry. Local government for the square mile, the Corporation is a hodgepodge of archaic pomp which has been only superficially squashed into conformity with the rest of the country. It is government chosen by business, run as a business, lobbying for the interests of business.
Here, companies literally have the vote. The Corporation claims it “
act[s] rather like a trade body
, representing finance and business interests. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism thinks of it more as a lobbying body. It’s one embedded deeply in British government, to the point of having a special place in parliament:
Sitting facing the Speaker’s chair is Paul Double, a City of London official known as the Remembrancer. Described by Nicholas Shaxson in his book Treasure Islands as ‘the world’s oldest institutional lobbyist’, the Remembrancer scours every piece of parliamentary legislation….to ensure the Corporation’s interests are never undermined again. The Remembrancer enjoys an annual budget of £6m– a portion of which is spent on his six in-house lawyers.