Why aren’t people more interested in the Republic of London, which tonight (5th May 2016) chooses its next President? Far more attention is paid to Scottish independence from the UK (an inevitability) than to the fact that the national capital has more or less seceded already, and has a republican form of government.

It is all part of an enormous constitutional revolution launched by the Blairite Eurocommunists but unimpeded by the ‘Conservative’ Party at the time, and unreversed by it later.

Let us sum this up:



The expulsion of most of the independent and uncontrollable hereditary peers from the House of Lords, and their replacement by nonentities appointed by party leaders, and so easily biddable by the executive. This did not merely weaken the Lords and strengthen the elective tyranny of Downing Street. It directly threatened the monarchy. If inherited office was improper for members of Parliament, how could it be defended in the case of the head of state. The rapid collapse of Tory opposition to this reform left the monarchy exposed to a future attack on the same lines (which I confidently predict not long after the next Coronation). It also produced a House of Lords whose size and character is now almost entirely indefensible, and which likewise cannot last. No prizes for guessing that it will in time be replaced by an elected senate which will be controlled, like the Commons, by the political parties and their whips and apparatchiks, and so by the executive.

The creation in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland of legislative chambers which use continental systems of election, designed to abolish the adversarial system which had until recently been such a strong safeguard of liberty in this country.

The creation of a special semi-detached status for Northern Ireland which can at any time be transferred to Dublin sovereignty by a single referendum.

These are big changes, and reflect the struggle for mastery over these islands between the declining and weakening federation known as the United Kingdom and the increasingly powerful rival federation known as the European Union. Two rival federations (as Yugoslavia found) cannot contend indefinitely for the same territory, and the creation of devolved governments in the outlying nations made and makes it easier for them to form direct relationships with the true capital in Brussels, bypassing London more and more. Devolution, so called, is actually part of the Europeanisation of these islands, and cannot be properly understood unless this point is grasped. The EU superstate finds it can digest former nation states much more easily if they are first broken down into smaller sections. Hence its near-obsession with ‘regions’ which are gradually being created in England by a salami-slicing process in which the ancient system of counties is emptied of all real power and becomes purely ceremonial. Functions such as planning, ambulance and fire services and (probably soon) police, have been or will be transferred in fact if not in name to regional authorities.

But back to London, whose form of government draws its legitimacy not from a Royal charter or anything so foolishly English, but to a referendum, a thing which can only happen if the government wants it to and whose result is usually fore-ordained.

The Greater London Authority is not elected like any other city or county council, but through a Continental Additional Member system, in which some members are picked from a list rather than sitting for actual wards or constituencies. I think it true to say that every new elected body created since the Blair revolution has spurned the traditional British system of simple first-past-the-post election. I suspect this is so that, by the time they get round to doing this to the House of Commons, nobody will think it odd or strange, or wonder why.

But this is as nothing to the election of its head of state, the Mayor. Even this (though it is bound to be a two-horse race in reality) is done on a supplementary vote system rather than on first past the post.

And that is as nothing to the real unexamined point. The head of state of this very large and strategically important part of a supposed Kingdom is elected. Mayors until this time have been constitutional monarchs, neutral, powerless figures usually chosen as a reward for long service and affability. The Mayor of London is a President, a thing repugnant to our style of government. The post is American. The method of election is European. He is not picked by the majority in the Assembly, as Prime Ministers are (more or less) picked by the majority in the Commons. He is directly elected and his own personal authority derived from direct election. The Assembly may question him, but lacks the power to remove him by a simple vote of no confidence.

You may like this or not(I do not) but it seems to me that it is quite revolutionary. I note that George Osborne is trying (as Labour once did ) to spread the idea of elected mayors. I suspect this will probably end up by taking a ‘regional’ form, which will of course please the EU. But it also spreads the idea of an elected head of state, who is obviously not a hereditary monarch. I have always said the Tories would guillotine the Queen in Trafalgar Square if it thought this would help them gain or retain office. But obviously a softer, kinder, gentler sunshinier way to a republic would suit them better. This may be it.