The plan of the leaders of the City of London council to award themselves substantial extra allowances has faced rare dissent from generally compliant elected members. An internal consultation has revealed that “diversity” is viewed as cynical cover for advancing the leaders’ agenda, the Town Clerk has become the leaders’ mouthpiece and adopts passive-aggressive tactics towards members who disagree with them, and even a masonic member admits that the masonic presence in the council has caused a lot of problems. We predict, however, that the leaders will still try to push through a revised proposal that gets those at the top most of what they want by way of extra allowances.