There are three sovereign states that are not part of the countries they are located in: the Vatican, Washington D.C and the “City of London.” The City of London is not part of Greater London, the UK or even Europe.  The City of London, the financial district of London also known as the “City” or the “Square Mile”, has a special status: it has its own government, its own mayor and its own independent police force. 

This clip is taken from a talk show in 2018, ‘Renegade Inc. – The Finance Curse’.  Host Ross Ashcroft was joined by Professor Richard Werner and City of London veteran David Buik, a businessman and financial pundit for the BBC and other British, American and Australian television channels.  Watch the full interview HERE.

The City of London Corporation

The City is the ancient core from which the rest of London developed. It has been a centre for settlement, trade, commerce and ceremony since the Roman period.

The Lord Mayor and City of London Corporation (“Corporation”) form one of the oldest local governments in the world, with a history of municipal autonomy extending in unbroken succession to the folkmoots of the early Middle Ages.

There is no surviving record of a charter first establishing the Corporation as a legal body, but the City is regarded as incorporated by prescription, meaning that the law presumes it to have been incorporated because it has for so long been regarded as such.  The Corporation has been granted various special privileges since the Norman Conquest in 1066.

It was in around 1189, the City gained the right to have its own mayor.

The Corporation had its privileges stripped by a writ of quo warranto under Charles II in 1683. Their privileges were later restored and confirmed by Act of Parliament under William III (William of Orange) and Mary II in 1690, after the revolution with King James II.

Over centuries, sovereigns and governments have sought loans from the City, and in exchange the City has extracted privileges and freedoms from British rules and laws.  As the Corporation itself says: “The right of the City to run its own affairs was gradually won as concessions were gained from the Crown.”

Within the Corporation, the Remembrancer’s Office is responsible for engaging with the UK Parliament.  The Remembrancer, whose position dates from the reign of Elizabeth I, is the City’s official lobbyist in parliament, sitting opposite the Speaker, and is “charged with maintaining and enhancing the City’s status and ensuring that its established rights are safeguarded”.

Note: There was a company registered with the UK Companies House named “City of London Corporation Ltd” whose main business was the management of real estate.  It was incorporated in February 2019 and had not submitted any financial statements, suggesting it never traded, and so was dissolved on 8 June 2021.

Centre of Financial Power

At the demise of Britain as a colonial power, the City’s financial interests created a web of offshore secrecy jurisdictions that captured wealth from across the globe and hid it behind obscure financial structures in a web of offshore islands. By 2017, up to half of global offshore wealth may have been hidden in British offshore jurisdictions and Britain and its offshore jurisdictions were the largest global players in the world of international finance.

The documentary below, The Spider’s Web, reveals how in the world of international finance, corruption and secrecy prevailed over regulation and transparency, and the UK is right at the heart of this.

If the video above is removed from YouTube, you can find it HERE.

The City is the world’s ultimate centre of financial power and the wealthiest square mile on the planet.  It should never be forgotten that money is power and this power rests largely in the City of London. And, this is relevant in the Covid era as well. 

Brian Gerrish gave his testimony to the Corona Investigative Committee about the use of applied behavioural psychology by the UK government. Responding to a question about the central organisation of the “Covid script” and whether he thought the UK was the “spider in the web”, Gerrish said:

“I am very embarrassed to say that I do believe it [the seat] is in the UK.  We are looking at a power base which is a mixture of the monetary power of the City of London, and what is very clear from the documentation is that that monetary power base is now fully working with the wider security services.  This is part of what in the UK they are calling the Fusion Doctrine … essentially, we can see that the monetary power base is now controlling both the intelligence networks, like GCHQ, but also the secret services. They are acting together.”

The City of London in the News

• London’s ‘Golden Age’ as Europe’s financial capital is over, says NatWest chair, May 2021
• Sunak pushes for City of London exemption from G7 tax plan, June 2021

Further resources:

• Video: 3 ‘City States’ Rule the World (14 mins), clipped from Ring of Power 1 – Empire of the City
• The 3 City States that Control the Whole World (blog), 2013
• Video: Ring of Power 1 – Empire of The City (YouTube, 5 hours) or  Video: Ring of Power, 2016 (Internet Archive)
• Death by Government, R.J. Rummel, 1994
• The ‘City of London’, 2016
• The Tax Haven in the Heart of Britain, 2011
• City of London website