Red Ed wants the banks to be spilt up and sold to new incomers, apparently.
In a speech on Monday, the Ed Miliband will reinforce his view that greater competition in the banking sector is needed, following Libor and interest rate scandals in the past few weeks that have cost three Barclays executives their jobs.
The Labour leader will call for the big five banks – Barclays, HBOS, HSBC, Lloyds TSB and RBS/NatWest – to become seven, with privately-run “challenger banks” to buy up to 1,000 existing branches. It is hoped that this will increase competition and choice for consumers as well as reduce bank charges.
A somewhat odd stance from Red Ed, but these are curious times. What he misses though is that much of this is down to what happened on his watch. He might choose to forget that Labour are up to their necks in the current mess. Others of us with clearer recall do not.
I don’t much like bankers. Certainly not after my dealings with the French variety – who are somewhat more vicious than their UK counterparts when things go wrong – but they are angels of light compared to politicians. When it comes to an inverse hierarchy of slime-balls, Politicians – particularly the Labour variety – are at the very bottom of the cess pit with the bankers some several stories above them when it comes to honourable, honest behaviour. Okay, that isn’t saying much, but it has to be said.
It is convenient for Miliband and Balls to make loud noises about the bankers and try to claim that the current administration is responsible, but they are just as responsible. So, a solution from a socialist scumbag who wants to force organisations to sell off part of their business and call it competition leaves me wondering why they didn’t practice what they preach now when they were in power. After all, they could have let the banks fail. Someone would have bought them up…
1) I am fairly happy with the service I get from my bank. Is Ed – towering intellect that he is – suggesting my bank sells branches to the detriment of the service I get just so he can feel good about himself and seen to be doing something?
2) To have this first rate fuckwit lecture ANYBODY on financial responsibility just beggars belief. During Labour’s term in power not only did the Government borrow excessively and hose it all over an unsustainable increase in spending, but it also signed hundreds of billions of pounds worth of PFI deals which have saddled taxpayers with TRILLIONS of pounds debt for a generation to come. In addition they created and presided over the regulatory system which allowed the Banks to run unhindered into trouble.
Frankly Miliband and Balls (and Brown) should be facing prison sentences for the chaos they created in power. Don’t even get me started on the bloody home “flipping” that Balls, Darling and others were up to…
1) That is precisely what he is suggesting.
And, yes, long gaol sentences for him, Balls and Brown are well deserved, but wishful thinking, I’m afraid.
Typical authoritarian who think he knows what to do. None of the politicians made the right decision in the past over the banks. Why should this decision be any better.
Anyway they don’t need to force the banks to sell branches to create new banks. New banks are being created already. Witness Virgin taking over Northern Rock. What is needed to help create more banks is less regulation.
Surprised! Don’t be. It was regulation that caused the banking problems, especially when everyone starts working towards box ticking rather than doing things properly. And when regulation is a manual 4″ thick telling a company that wants to be a bank what to do and not to do then you know that the barrier for new banks is very high.
Lower the barrier and new banks will flourish.
But will politicians do the proper thing or the thing that is engrained in their blood.
I presume that last was a rhetorical question…
Yup.
T. B. Liar’s party FORCED the merger of Lloyd’s & HBOS, & are now complaining about “monopolies” hum.
I wonder what the supposed “new challenger banks” would be called?
Here’s a useful list of names ….
Martins, Yorkshire, Coutts’, National Provincial …
And, of course, it is very suggestive that the incompetent Mr Milibean doesn’t mention an existing “challenger” … the CO-OPERATIVE BANK.
What a plonker.
Greg, it was Gordoom himself who had a word in Victor Blank’s shell-like to force the Lloyds-HBOS merger. Nowt to do with “saving the banks” but more to do with saving his own skin. There aren’t enough expletives in the English language to describe my contempt for Brown and his cohorts.
I’m sure you could give it your best effort, though…
I’m afraid we will all be much older before the unCo-operative bank gets a mention. Just a co-incidence that the major beneficiary of the Lloyds debacle is likely to be the bank that holds most of the debts of the Liebour Party. As an ex-employee I can certainly lift the lid on a pretty bad bunch but they are no more “ethical” than a Great White Shark is Vegan!