Vincent Keaveny has become only the second Lord Mayor of the City of London to miss out on the traditional knighthood and instead receive the lesser award of a CBE, the first being Ian Luder more than a decade ago. This may reflect a new approach 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. 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 a 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.

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