While live-blogging the party leaders’ debates during the election I noted my suprise that Cameron was so firm on the banks, and particularly the need to split off casino banking from retail banking. I wondered if he really meant it.
Well, yesterday’s Mansion House by Geore Osborne speech showed that Cameron didn’t mean it. Knocking the bankers was just to gain votes. Proposals to split casino banking and retail banking are now to be shuffled off to a commission, kicked far into the long grass, never to be seriously heard of again.
It is the worst betrayal of election rhetoric by the Tories so far, and the biggest kick in the bollocks for we Lib Dems. Yet strangely neither media nor bloggers seem to have noticed it much, distracted succesfully by the much less important proposal to give the FSA’s powers to the Bank of England.
Here is Michael Meacher:
http://www.michaelmeacher.info/weblog/2010/06/in-merv-we-trust/