For Financial News last week I wrote a column on the difficulties the City of London is having in defending itself from attack. Come bonus and results season you cannot move at Canary Wharf for political leaders who have come to make long televised speeches about remoralising capitalism. When is someone prominent from the City going to return the favour, book a decent venue near Westminster and stick it to the politicians?

Part of the problem is that too many of the City’s leaders allow themselves to be trapped into talking about financial services in terms of bonuses and the pay of senior executives. This is not a winnable argument in the current climate.

As a senior banker put it to me: “There is myopia. My peers earn top-people’s salaries and they pay for and dominate the industry bodies. So for them top-people’s remuneration is the number one issue. That’s a mistake.”

But of the two million people employed in financial services or related industries, only a small minority earn eye-watering Bob Diamond style sums. Most – in the back offices across the City – earn relatively modest sums for which they work hard.

On any week day morning go to one of the large transport hubs such as Bank, Liverpool St or London Bridge, through which hundreds of thousands flow in from the suburbs and home counties. You’ll see the foot-soldiers of the City: hard-working, tax-paying and aspirational.

And they are hardly ever mentioned in this saga.

The other day I cited supermarkets and retailers as engines of employment and social mobility. Well, so is the City. As I wrote in Financial News:

“Many senior investment bankers – and quite a few of those who played pivotal roles in the lead-up to the crash – were harvested from the best universities. But thousands of other workers joined their organisations in lowly positions and through hard work and by seizing opportunities have created good careers, generating wealth and paying relatively large amounts of tax compared with their fellow Britons.

Perhaps this truth is so obvious to those who work in the City that they have forgotten that most sceptical Britons are largely unaware of it.

They have never visited the Square Mile, or Canary Wharf, and know only what they read about the now un-knighted former RBS chief executive, Fred the Shred. I doubt many British voters understand that the City is also about law, insurance, accountancy, property, etc.”

You can read the whole thing here.

Must there be reform? Of course. Have rewards got wildly out of kilter with reality? In some places, yes. But at some point the City is going to have to get up off its knees.