No Knighthood For Vincent Keaveny – Until Now It Was Standard To Award One To Former Lord Mayors

Historically, nearly all the Lord Mayors of the City of London have been knighted, unless they already held that title or a higher one.

An exception is Ian Luder (2008-9), who was snubbed with the lesser award of a CBE. His immediate successor (2009-10) declined any honour. The pattern of Lord Mayors being rewarded with knighthoods resumed from 2010 up to and including William Russell.

The Birthday Honours List published on 16 June 2023, however, announced that Vincent Keaveny has been awarded a CBE, like Luder more than a decade earlier. We’re not aware that Keaveny blotted his copybook from the perspective of either the City council or the national government, as neither share the revulsion of ordinary people at his appeasing human rights abusers in China, Kazakhstan and other places, and that’s something which in recent times all Lord Mayors have done anyway. So his being downgraded to a CBE is more likely to reflect a new approach taken by those deciding on honours awards, which is that spending a year eating a lot of lunches and dinners and reading speeches written by staff – in short, being Lord Mayor – doesn’t deserve a knighthood / damehood. In fact, it’s hard to make a rational case for a Lord Mayor deserving any honour, especially when the lowest award – the BEM – is often conferred on people who have done voluntary work for decades rather than a single year, don’t have staff to do practically everything for them and often work in uncongenial circumstances, like selling poppies in November instead of proposing toasts beneath the chandeliers of Mansion House.

Catherine McGuinness, the Chair of Policy (= Leader of the Council) from 2017 to 2022, can empathise with Keaveny’s disappointment, as when the New Year’s Honours list was published in January 2023 she got only a CBE, in contrast to two of her predecessors, Mark Boleat (2012-2017) and Michael Snyder (2003-2008), who received knighthoods. (The Chair of Policy between those two, Stuart Fraser (2008-2012), got a CBE, but he completed only four out of the five years of his term of office). It’s a moot point whether McGuinness was downgraded to a CBE because of her ineffective leadership or because of a change of approach by those deciding on honours awards.

The Lord Mayor and Chair of Policy are national nobodies whose offices carry a lot of personal privileges and whose achievements range from zero to very small in a very small pond. So there’s something inherently ridiculous about them being granted the same honour as the inventor of the world wide web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

The easy acquisition of undeserved honours is one of many indicators of moral malaise within the City of London Corporation. The fact that honours now seem harder to get is another sign that this institution is beginning to lose its mystique. When that mystique goes, so too will the Corporation, as it relies on spin to survive. When viewed objectively, its various conflicting public and private functions would all be much better done by various other bodies.

Another surprise in the latest honours list is the award of a damehood to genocide appeaser Alderwoman Sue Langley, by way of an upgrade from her current OBE. She is described in the list as “Non-Executive Chair, Gallagher UK” (why should having a part-time paid position in a commercial concern entitle anyone to an honour?) and “lately Lead Non-Executive Director, Home Office” (why should having a part-time position in a government department that has long fitted the description of “not fit for purpose” entitle anyone to an honour?). The list gives the vague citation “For Public Service and to the Financial Services Industry”. Life is sweet if you’re a well-connected non-executive director who, in addition to earning a lot of money for yourself out of financial services, has a limited association with a government department that brings you within the orbit of honours handouts ….

Sue Langley: we’ve heard her favourite song is Rodgers and Hammerstein’s There Is Nothin’ Like A Dame from the musical South Pacific.

It will be interesting to see which honour, if any, the current Lord Mayor, Nicholas Lyons, receives after the end of his term of office in November 2023. The fact that he’s an Irish rather than British citizen makes the award of an honour more complicated, but still possible. He’s already blotted his copybook – at least from the public’s perspective – by showing himself to be a hypocrite. We’re receiving persistent reports, though, of a much bigger story about him breaking within the next five months. If that results in him being awarded no honour at all by the honours committee, he can console himself with the thought that junior council staff think he deserves a title: among themselves they call the current occupants of Mansion House “Lord and Lady Muck” on account of their haughty attitude ….