Alistair Darling, the ‘safe pair of hands’, Mr Management personified, has allowed a leak of his forthcoming memoir (that might survive longer than most before being remaindered) that “My worry is that they [the bankers] were so arrogant and stupid they might bring us all down.” Sir Fred Goodwin (acted like he was “off to play a game of golf”), Andy Hornby (“looking like he was about to explode”) et al could not take in how monumentally incompetent they were – Masters of the Universe being sucked down a black hole – and it was left to the taxpayer to pick up the pieces. Though the memoir is being published next week, it is more than about drumming up some publicity, it is politically strategic.
This week has heard that elements of the Coalition Government are voicing concerns (no doubt passed on through their financier friends) that banking reform should be delayed. I would be surprised if Darling wasn’t fuming as he heard Angela Knight, chief executive of the British Bankers’ Association and public face of the collective insist that banking reform must be postponed. She may have argued that the economic fundamentals were weak but she has the shameless chutzpah to sound as if bankers were some downtrodden underclass. There is not a hint of sincerity, a scintilla of apology, that the precise reason the economic fundamentals are weak are because of the tsunami of financial carnage unleashed by idiots promoted far beyond their competence (and initially abetted by politicians dazzled by the high-rolling lifestyle). In fact, this is exactly the best time to separate the retail and ‘casino’ arms of the banking giants because the global economy cannot take another banking shock. There has been a failure of nerve in Washington D.C. as Tim Geithner is Wall Street’s bitch and is trying to use Clinton-era medicine for completely changed circumstances. However, Germany and France have the banks in their sights (admittedly, not completely for altruistic reasons) and now is the time for a pan-European initiative. Osborne or Knight can’t claim that Britain will risk ruin if it acts alone because it will be in the protective blanket of the biggest economic zone in the world, of the EU.