Interesting article today from Bloomberg about the gender disparity in the voting for the City of London elections - 73% of the electors for businesses are male.
The City of London Corporation is a deeply regressive, secretive organization and this is one more demonstration of that fact.
The fact that individuals have 9,000 votes and businesses – mostly in finance -- have 32,000, and that the City has a representative, the Remembrancer, on the floor of the House of Commons, which no other national interest has, are more serious issues than the gender balance of the electors. (I've written about these issues before.)
'But I'm delighted that this year's elections, thanks to the efforts of the City Reform Group in contesting these elections, has led to new light being thrown on the City. I hope that it will be the first step towards the abolition of this feudal anachronism, and the introduction of full democracy across the whole city of London. (The results of the election can be found here - and some analysis here. In short, no big breakthrough, but the election of a couple of reformers should hopefully be useful.)
That would also be a significant step towards reining in the rampant, dangerous continuing power of the financial industries over British national politics (an interesting exploration of that here), which has significantly warped and greatly damaged our economy.
It's worth recycling a Clement Attlee quote: "Over and over again we have seen that there is in this country another power than that which has its seat at Westminster. The City of London, a convenient term for a collection of financial interests, is able to assert itself against the Government of the country. Those who control money can pursue a policy at home and abroad contrary to that which has been decided by the people."