There’s only a very muted and limited reference to possibly, perhaps, one day breaking up banks in the Conservative Party manifesto. Then in yesterday’s third TV debate David Cameron bigged up the importance he gives to breaking up the banks. And then … in today’s Contract from the Conservative Party there’s no mention of doing anything to the banks.
So who’s off message? Cameron? The manifesto? The contract? It’s this sort of inconsistency that seems to have bedevilled the Conservative campaign. To take another example – the “Big Society” was meant to be the Conservative Party’s big idea, but only got mentioned by Cameron 12 minutes from the end of last night’s debate.
If nothing else, this all will certainly make the post-election reports as to quite what has been going on in the Conservative campaign an interesting read.
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RT @markpack: New post: Breaking up the banks: Conservative flip flops continue http://bit.ly/dCXgvE #GE2010
I wish we could move away from blaming all people who work in banks for what happened. Even if it’s not meant, it does hurt.
I wrote an essay in the mid 90s advocating mutual banks if they wanted to move away from the shackles of building societies, but did anyone listen (or rather read)?
The vast, vast majority of people who work in UK banking are moderately paid and serve the customer. Even those Execs who lead us down a particular path didn’t on the whole, do it deliberately. Incompetence perhaps, and trust in the next tier of underlings, probably. But no one set out – well some may have – to screw everything up.
I was proud to say I worked for my bank. I was even prouder to say I worked for it when it was a Building Society. Now I feel ashamed and I’ve done nothing wrong.