CITY AND SUBURBAN
The Lord Mayor has trumpets and musketeers and pikemen, but no handle
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
Rolling through the City in his golden coach, Paul Newall succeeds this weekend as the 666th Lord Mayor of London, which puts him on the same number as the Beast in Revelations and in one respect is unlucky. The Blues and Royals, trumpets blowing, will escort him, Doggett's Coat and Badge Men will march before him, his sword-bearer will attend him, his personal bodyguard of pikemen and musketeers will follow him, but he will have to get along as best he can without a handle. A baronetcy used to come with the job, and, when that honour came to be reserved for the con- sorts of retiring prime ministers, Lord May- ors were made Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire. Now a revi- sionist Prime Minister, reconstructing the honours list, has cut the custom out, start- ing with Lord Mayor Newall. In and around the City this has generated umbrage. Some take it as an affront to the City and the mayoralty, and a poor return for all those dinners for visiting potentates — this week it was the Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia — wished upon Guild- hall by the Foreign Office. I urge a more robust attitude.. The City has always main- tained its independence of ministers and sometimes of monarchs — Clarendon, the Stuarts' minister, called it the sink of all ill- humour in the kingdom — and it need not wait on them for honours. There were Lord Mayors of London before there were baronets (a Stuart revenue raiser) and long before there was a British empire, and they have watched enough heads roll on Tower Green to know that ministers are transient.
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