Their proceedings ceased to be reported. The career ladder was hacked away at the bottom. The mayoralties are a vacuum to be filled by passing market traders like Jeffrey or washed-up national figures visited from on high. Democracy isn't a transplant. It's a system tightly bound.
Ambition requires something more than ego and a facile tongue.
Offices like this mayoralty have to relate up and relate down. Now, as Lord Archer departs to eat dinner alone, is the moment to reflect that the only sound at the pulling of this mayoral chain is the sound of water, flushing.