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Buckle-up as 2011 is going to be one rocky ride. Undoubtedly, this is the year when all our excesses are coming home to roost and we better take as many safety precautions as possible. The recent VAT hike has taken up most of the political commentary of late but let’s not forget that the impending big squeeze in public service provision and public service jobs which is about to start and with continued rises in the cost-of-living (equating to an estimated £400 per household) we all going to feel the pinch. Or are we? So far, the general public at large seems to be broadly going along with Dave’s ‘Big Society’ but it won’t be long before people realise how shockingly far we are departing from Georgie-Boy’s ‘all in this together pledge’.
And the first signs have been witnessed over the last couple of days in the coalition’s response to this year’s round of banker-bonus rumpus. As Dead-Ed pointed out in this week’s PMQs, last year’s hard-edged opposition statement was they would limit any such bonuses to £2000 and not a penny more. Why, it’s still on the official Tory website and we surely have to assume it remains a pledge they would stand by? Don’t you believe it and let’s see how quickly they roll over on this one and show us who their true paymasters are. All in it together? Don’t make me laugh. Current speculation is that banker-bonus payments will this year total £7bn with a startling £2m award being made to the outgoing chief executive of Lloyds Bank, Eric Daniels and a downright obscene £2.5m going to Stephen Hester, boss of 84% taxpayer-owned RBS. Go figure.
And can anyone recall the fine words from Nick Clegg in last year’s Liberal manifesto? For those of you who’ve unintentionally allowed it to slip your mind let me remind you: “Doesn’t it make you angry that the banks have been allowed to ride roughshod over our economy, and are still handing out bonuses by the bucket-load?” Now the poor lad’s reduced to requesting the financiers to be ‘sensitive’. The fact that they apparently believe last year’s gestures were not ‘appreciated’ by the population at large suggests to me they’re not inclined to show their ‘sensitive’ side again any time soon.
Cast your mind back a few short months and recall that the UK’s problems were enormous. The world’s banking economy teetered on the abyss, brought to its knees by a level of unprecedented prolifigation, a credit fuelled asset boom and seemingly inexhaustible supply of cheap credit. To his credit, boring Presbyterian so-and-so that he is, Gordon Brown can justifiably claim to be our saviour in taking the singular and courageous decision to commit unlimited sums of public money to recapitalise the British banking industry. Shortly thereafter every major worldwide government followed suit. Admittedly, he shouldn’t have preceded it with the vacuous ‘an end to boom and bust’ slogan but thank heavens he was around to take the decisions he did. I suspect Osborne would have been found sadly wanting.
