City middlemen don’t like Osborne precisely because he is competent

Mark Cannon

I think you are overdoing it when you refer to the Tories "collapse" in the polls. Calm down!

Vulture

'That is, of course, grotesquely unfair. Every politician is entitled to a holiday'.

Except that in Boy George's case he takes his in the company of Peter Mandelslime onboard a Russian oligarch's yacht.

The quality that this over-promoted, pampered nitwit lacks - and which makes the City rightly distrustful of him - is judgement.

He's only where he is because he's Dave's best pal ( Apart from the sinister Steve Hilton).

Charles

If you look at the details of the polls, they are definitely not "leading financiers". Less than 1% earned more than £1m, and only 4% more than £500K.

Either all the newspaper stories about how much leading financiers get paid are garbage...or this panel isn't the real deal.

So who do you believe...the media or the polling firms?

Disillusioned

I think the reason they dislike him is the reason the rest of the country is pretty cool on him too: he doesn't know anything about finance or economics.

Let's be honest, his background really hasn't prepared him for this role and he's out of his depth.

Gary Williams

The reason that Osborne is not popular with the City is that he has never been a businessman who learned how the real world works, and he lacks the only credible alternative of a serious background in economics. Loath though I am to say it, in terms of experience and education he is no more qualified to be Chancellor of the Exchequer than Brown was, and we all know about that shipwreck.
He also gives the impression of being callow. If I may again make a comparison with a Labour politician, Osborne seems to have as much gravitas as potential Chancellor as David Miliband has as Foreign Secretary: that is, not enough for the job.
George Osborne may well be razor-sharp and become a brilliant Chancellor. To those in the City who have succeeded because of their ability to make tough, dispassionate judgments, however, it is not yet clear that he would be the best man for a position that requires someone with exceptional analytical ability, insight, and character.

THX1138

My French is crap, but apparently this Le Monde piece represents a devastating attack "Oik" Osborne

http://is.gd/acQkM

TrevorsDen

The city? Middlemen? I hope they read your posts because they are just a load of bastard barrow boys.

Barrow boys who have just effed the nation.

Next time you have a cosy chat with them Mr Blackburn pleas have the good grace to tell them what a load of toss pot criminal bilge swimmers i think they are.

And thats before we consider how they cosied up to new labour to see how they could mutually profit from shafting the nation.

THX1138

Paul Waugh has a translation of the Le Monde attack on Osborne

http://is.gd/acSxo

This stood out:

"claiming that he lacks courtesy and punctuality"

Having met him I can testify to that!

denis cooper

If Osborne is so competent, how come that he apparently failed to spot, and certainly failed to condemn, the government's cunning plan to get the Bank of England to prop up (rig) the gilts market so that it could carry on borrowing and spending?

Starting a year ago today, with the first reverse auction to buy up previously issued gilts - an anniversary which you might care to note.

That failure on his part could help to deprive the Tories of their long awaited general election victory.

Tom Pride

Heard much whinging about Labour’s Bankers Bonus tax recently? Noticed how the tax has raised a billion or more than initially expected? Wondered why?

The tax falls not on the employees who receive the bonuses but on the owners of the banks. The shareholders who ultimately have been fleeced by this tax are the innocent little folk, those with ISAs, pensions and other savings, the same little guys who suffered when the value of their bank shares collapsed as a result of the irresponsible behaviour of senior employees of the banks.

The one thing you can be sure about Labour – it does not understand how a market economy works and so always ends up hitting the hard working little folk hardest, rewarding its voter bank, the underclass and its middleclass client state, while leaving the super rich unsupervised to amass unwarranted gains at the expense of the economy as a whole.

We can but hope that the draper’s son will take over where the grocer’s daughter left off.

(N.B. Nice post by John Redwood - Have the Conservatives changed enough? One of the triumphs of Labour spin over the last twenty years has been to caricature Thatcherism.)
http://www.johnredwoodsdiary.com/2010/03/10/have-the-conservatives-changed-enough/

Paul B

What Trevorsden said!! The bankers are just another vested interest that needs sorting. If they dislike him, hes doing something right!

Neil Turner

The UK has fallen a long way since 1997.

If the next Government does its job properly, many sacred cows must be slain, and feathers ruffled

I imagine that the Police "Service", NHS, Social Services and many Quangos will be doing all they can right now to prop up the dead parrot Brown

El Sid

What an utterly trite and ignorant article. The vast majority of the City would be unaffected by a British Glass-Steagall. And as someone who speaks to a lot more than just the odd one or two City folk, I can tell you that their doubts about Osborne have nothing to do with a putative Glass-Steagall, they go back to before the crisis started.

Thing is, people in the City do know a bit about finance and economics - and they can easily spot someone who doesn't. It's obvious that Osborne has no great depth of understanding of his brief, and certainly no intuitive "feel" for it.

He wings it a lot of the time; although he obviously has some excellent people briefing him for big set pieces on Newsnight etc the cracks soon start to show once things veer off the beaten track.

It's a bit like if I walked off the street and into a hospital, put on a white coat and said I was a doctor. I know enough of the jargon to bluff my way in, but I'd kill most of the patients put in my care.

Sure he's entitled to a holiday - but he does want the job of Chancellor in the middle of the biggest crisis for several generations, and yet knows less about economics than Russell Howard. Hell even I devoted my leisure time at that time to reading up on von Mises and Warren Harding and all that, so I'd hope the Shadow Chancellor could do the same. It's telling that he'd rather read about politics than economics, ties in with that thing about him being proud of spending as much as 30% of his time on economics. I'm reminded of another recent Chancellor who is intensely political but wasn't too worried about his effect on the public finances....

I've always regarded Osborne as the weak link in Cameronism, and I think he is directly responsible for the Tories flagging ratings at a time when economics has been to the fore. He'd be much better off as party chairman or something, people seem to rate him at doing that schmoozing stuff. The problem with him as Shadow Chancellor is nothing to do with policy and all about character.

Right now I'd quite like to see a Tory government with a Chancellor who is not currently a member of the party, a GOAT if you like. Not the sainted Vince, but Al Darling. There's been a lot of signs that when he's free of Brown's control Darling has the right instincts, simplifying Brown's labyrinthine tax system and cutting CGT for instance. There's the continuity at a time when the Tories need to get things up and running quickly, and he'd be more eager than the Tories to undo Brown's mess. Call me Darling - you know it makes sense. :-)))

Maggie

Is this a variation on the story being peddled by the Mandelson spin machine today :"Le Monde doesn't like Osborne". - I expect we'll be bored senseless in the next few days by Newsnight, Any Questions, Question Time, Nick Robinson, The Guardian, Paul Waugh, The Standard, The Independent all telling us every five minutes who doesn't like George Osborne. Labour's invented another hate figure and occupy them in the unlikely event that they might start discussing the economy. They must think we're all as gormless as journalists.

David Blackburn

El Sid,

In response to your beautifully lucid comment, Darling got 7% of support in this poll...
Certainly, Osborne is unpopular in the City. I agree that he isn't a particularly likeable personality. But he has been ahead of the curve on regulation and handing power back to shareholders. Now I'm sure you sources in the City are more numerous and important than mine, but mine report that their bosses don't like it. Personally, I think Osborne should make more of it and stand up for shareholders and tackle divisive vested interests.

As to the argument about experience, Brown had nil in 1994 and the City loved him. The argument is a non-sequitor.

David Blackburn

No Maggie, if you read the post, it says something quite different. It's pro-Osborne. Go on girl, give it a whirl.

Occasional Ostrich

@Vulture
March 11th, 2010 1:21pm

You don't like him, then?

Dean

More wishful thinking from the Spectator. Osborne is disliked by the City for two reasons. First, he is threatening to abolish the FSA, which most City institutions see as a pointlessly disruptive exercise, given that it was not the tripartite structure that caused the credit crisis.

Secondly, Osborne doesn't seem to understand that the origins of the banking crisis lay in a massive market failure on the part of financial institutions that had always claimed to be managing their risks effectively. Osborne has tried to blame the credit crisis on government, as though it were a simple re-run of the 1970s, when in fact (as everyone knows) it has been government and central bank intervention that has saved the Western economic system from complete meltdown.

The rest of the population mistrust Osborne because he is seemingly incapable of giving clear signals about the Tories' intentions in office. He bangs on about the need to cut the deficit sharply without informing us where and how the cuts are going to be made and which areas of the budget (if any) are going to be protected (apart from the NHS). So as voters we have absolutely no idea whether, in 2-3 years time, we are going to have more or fewer police on the streets, or more or fewer teachers in our schools. These are pretty fundamental questions, and the inability of Osborne and Cameron to answer them six weeks ahead of an election must be one reason why the Tory lead is slipping.

The basic problem is the disconnect between the instinctive Tory belief in "small government" (which at an abstract level has some merit) and the perception of many voters that government is not actually the biggest problem in their lives. As well as wasting money on quangos, governments provide services which people need (unless they can afford to go private), so most voters simply don't see government as an elephantine burden in the way many Tory activists suppose.

If Osborne wants to make the deficit a big issue in the Tory election campaign, he needs to do much more to reassure floating voters that core services such as police, education, health, and refuse collection are not going to be cut back under a Tory government.

Short the UK

Undeveloping Nation Syndrome: read Mohamed El-Erian in the FT today.

When are the elite going to truly wake up?

stephen

David Blackburn I feel you have rather spun Kirkup's Telegraph piece. I sense the folk in the Boy's Bunker are getting a bit edgey.The folk in the City are right to be worried; its not regulation its the "economy stewpid!" How do you feel about putting BoyGeorge up against a willy old fox like Strauss Kahn of the IMF? Osborne is now a bit like the old British Rail sandwich! Indeed watching him on Sky last night sandwiched between Brown and Cable he was very lack lustre!

Adrian Sells

Regulating the City, and therefore being liked or disliked by its denizens, should not really be the issue for the Chancellor. The real problem with Osborne is that he showed no understanding of the impending economic crisis in advance of its arrival (and don't give us the old lie that few did - actually quite a lot did)and he stuck slavishly to Labour's spending plans until is was far too late. He has little understanding of basic economics.

Maggie

That must mean that Speculators in the City have placed their bets on a failing pound and are anticipating making a killing from the demise of sterling. They'll obviously be keen to support Labour because a Labour government will guarantee further economic disaster. But if the British economy under the Conservatives and George Osborne revives and strengthens they will lose their bets.

Dorothy Wilson

"Thing is, people in the City do know a bit about finance and economics"

Well, how come the banks and their mates in the City almost forced the country into bankruptcy?

Marcus Cotswell

Now hold on just a cotton-picking minute. Can we get a few things straight? Nobody has any idea yet whether Osborne is 'competent' or not. Time will tell (assuming the Tories maange to limp over the line in 8 weeks' time). The reasons most of the City is ambivalent (and I would put it no stronger than that) towards him are many:
- for all the talk of charm offensives, these are fairly limited in scope. They're either to the bigwigs at the very top of the food chain or to self-identifying Conservative supporters. There's actualyl been very little attempt by Osborne personally to 'woo' the City, with this task being left largely to the likes of Mark Hoban, David Gauke and Greg Hands.
- the proposals to abolish the FSA seem rather ill-considered - which is not to say that they're wrong per se, just that at the moment it seems like a lot of disruption to inflict on what is, despite the popular mythology perpetuated in this article, a heavily-regulated sector, without any clear explanation of what benefits will derive from it. At the moment it looks as if most of the people doing the regulating will simply up sticks from Canary Wharf to Threadneedle St and carry on much as before.
- at the end of the day, he may or may not be a brilliant political strategist (I tend to the view that he is) and the soundness of his economic vision is not, in my view, the issue, either; but his presentational abilities leave a lot to be desired for a frontline politician, as I suspect he would acknowledge himself in private.

Percy

David Blackburn,

Of course the City loved Brown in 94 as they saw before them a fool who would let them run riot.

John David Barnett

Osborne is the man we need.

The Laughing Cavalier

For some time now "Free market capitalism has been suspended by a self-appointed financial oligarchy". In classic marxist terms, Labour has supplanted Capital. Huge salaries and grossly disproportionate. bonuses paid by bankers to themselves for illusory (mark to market) profits are symptomatic of the problem. Of course the middlemen don't like Osborne, he threatens to halt the gravy train and restore equilibrium. The City has always had a preference for Labour governments, runaway public spending makes opportunities for enrichment; it's easier to get your fingers in the till when the socialists are in power.

The Laughing Cavalier

Why should we give a four X what Le Monde thinks? Paris doesn't have a vote in our election.

Steve Tierney

I rather like Osborne. In every instance he seems to understand the nature of our difficulties, which is more than I can say for Darling or the Claim-it-all Cable.

To say, as on commenter did, he didn't spot the government propping up their schemes with gilts and QE in a magic combo is silly. Of course he did. We all did. It was bloody obvious from the start to anybody with half a brain.

Publius

Once again Dean engages in Mandelsonian smearing masquerading as measured analysis.

cityboozer

Jesus. The city is not the same as business. That is the most important thing. The CBI and the IoD are much more important organisations than any group of city types (though both of them are these days much diminished).

Secondly, bankers are not economists. Senior bankers are of course well-informed and banks keep tame economists who they will trust with the odd big punt but generally speaking very little money is made or lost on macroeconomics.

The ratings agencies are a truer measure of credibility. So far, they prefer the Boy, though of course it's true that their complicity in every disaster since LTCM makes their own credibility a little wobbly.

Verity

THXWhatever writes, re Osborne: ""claiming that he lacks courtesy and punctuality"

"Having met him I can testify to that!"

Why? Because he was a little slow in putting his glass down when you held out the tray?

Verity

Short - They're well awake, alert and manipulating you. They want it like this.

El Sid

Thanks for the reply David.

So Brown had little experience before becoming Chancellor. Well that worked out well, didn't it? With that comment you seem to be making a persuasive case for Clarke or Darling to be Chancellor, maybe Hammond or Cable at a pinch, anyone but Osborne. :-))

In any case, my point wasn't about experience so much as "feel" or "instinct". It just seems that Osborne in particular will not default to a position of free enterprise and minimising red tape in the absence of good reasons to do otherwise. It seems he just doesn't "get" allowing people to get on and make money in a way that Clarke certainly does, and I suspect Hammond would too.

Not that it's just Osborne, it seems to be common to most of the North London political classes, from Islington westwards. I guess one effect of the Tory retreat to the heartlands post-1992 was that they lost the earthy practicality that came from business(wo)men in the Midlands and North. It's a shame, now more than ever is the time for that old strain of "Yorkshire Toryism" to come to the fore. No, Pickles is not what I'm thinking of!!! :-)

I certainly don't think his unpopularity has much to do with likeability - the City has no shortage of unlikeable faceless toffs! They do put a premium on competence though, and they just don't see it in Osborne. The people I talk to (they're certainly not that important, but they do have to think about macroeconomics on a daily basis - pension fund managers, ship brokers, that kind of thing) are much more worried about his instincts and guiding principles in response to new crises, than about this bit of regulation or that. That's why I said it's not about policy, it's about character.

I'd dispute your claim that he's been ahead of the curve on much. I'm minded of a real car crash of an appearance on Newsnight at the height of the crisis when he started talking about bonuses and obviously had not the slightest clue what he was on about (because it was outside the briefing?). Fortunately for him he could hide in the gaping chasms of Paxman's grasp of economics, and it probably seemed to go OK to outsiders, but a couple of Tory-supporting friends made comments along the lines of "We had no idea he was that clueless" afterwards. This wasn't crisis-related, he had no idea of how things worked in normal times. He's quite good at bluffing about this stuff, but people with a grasp of the subject soon see through him.

I'd agree he's been timid but I think the problem is that he lacks the guiding principles and confidence in his subject that would allow him to amplify any nuggets into a fully-fledged policy. Like Gove for instance, and more recently Maude's government sunlight thing. Blimey - Osborne makes Francis Maude look good, that's how bad he is.

I've probably gone on long enough. I really ought to sort out my own blog and do a proper Fisking of Osborne's policies some time.

In the meantime, here's a brilliant article about Mike Burry that should be read by anyone who thinks that noone in the City deserves a bonus or that noone foresaw the crisis :
http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2010/04/wall-street-excerpt-201004?printable=true

Bluebottle

If Cameron has any sense, a bit of steel in his backbone, and the chance on May 7th, he will say to Boy George: "Sorry Old Bean, you are not the right man to be Chancellor" and appoint John Redwood instead.

TGF UKIP

David Blackburn, you plainly disagree with your boss who has previously reported the City view of Osborne as being inadequately versed in economic and financial matters.

As I have previously posted a City contact of mine who is a technical expert on a matter likely to be of central importance to any Chancellor had a meeting with Osborne. He found him badly briefed, bored and uninterested and like so many others declared him to be barely civil.

denis cooper

@ Steve Tierney, a sufferer from false memory syndrome.

If as you say Osborne spotted that the government was enormously expanding its scope for borrowing and spending by getting the Bank to prop up (rig) the gilts market, why didn't he protest about it? Didn't he also spot the electoral implications? Or did he remain silent because he thought that it was a pretty good wheeze, and he might want to do the same thing when he became Chancellor?

Gary Williams

Dorothy Wilson,

"Well, how come the banks and their mates in the City almost forced the country into bankruptcy?"

"The banks and their mates" - would they be analogous to the equally undiscriminated "the politicians", "the lawyers", "the men" or perhaps "the women"?
When will "you people" figure out that our economic predicament had - and continues to have - a broad, complex set of causes, of which only one was the actions of a relatively small group of people whom you seem to think of as "the banks"?

Dorothy Wilson

Gary Williams: Ooopphhhss! I forgot to pin some of the blame on Brown and his incontinent spending splurge.

For the record, I have worked in the City.

Fergus Pickering

Bollocks! Osborne doesn't have to be an economist. He can employ economists. They area dime a dozen. Clarke was a good chancellor and he knows sweet fanny adams about economics. You might as well say the Minister for Education should be an educationalist or the Minister fro sport be a footballer. If economists were all so bloody clever then how come... And that goes for financial experts as well. Overpaid ninnies. Good old George Bernard Shaw said all professions were conspiracies against the laity. Politicians should be on the side of the laity.

lola

Dean@ 2.50pm. Cobblers. I run a regulated business and from bitter experience I know absolutely just how useless the failed FSA is and how hopeless is Brown's Tripartite system. A system designed to divide and conquer and put all power and knowledge in one mn's hands. Brown's. The FSA etc are a key cause of the credit crisis and banking failures. Their rulebook is nationalisation by regulation. The banks were de facto nationalised and cartelised by the regulations before they failed.

Gary Williams

Fergus Pickering,

Even he who employs economists must have a sufficient understanding of what they tell him to know who's making sense and who isn't, and what to do about it.
Gordon Brown employed an army of economists, but that did not stop him from making profoundly stupid economic decisions.
The subject is Osborne, and why many in the City are not inspired by him. As I wrote above, he might turn out to be a brilliant Chancellor, but his not knowing a great deal about either economics or business is not going to give him a leg up on doing the job well.
On the other hand, having Osborne as Chancellor would mean no longer having Gordon Brown in any Government position, and getting rid of that corrupt fool would have to be a good thing.

TGF UKIP

We are, of course, all overlooking Osborne's principal qualifications - a fellow Bullingdonian, a godfather to Dave's kid's, a rich family with a minor baronetcy, a trust fund and naturally a very close friend of Dave.

Now how could the City possibly want more qualifications than that?

DavidDP

"he has never been a businessman who learned how the real world works, and he lacks the only credible alternative of a serious background in economics"

Based on the last couple of years, hardly anyone in the City appears to have a serious background in economics.

Major Plonquer

I think it's a bit thick to claim that George Osborne isn't a bit thick.

Nicholas

I like him. I think he will make a good chancellor. The main problem, as with most Tory ideas, is that he is not radical enough. The Tories will only wound the beast rather than kill it and will spend their first term fighting a resurgent communist rearguard throughout the institutions whilst Labour in opposition will get to spend 100% of their time on anti-Tory spin and propaganda.

They may be able to lever Labour out of government - just - but the soviet bloc embedded within the establishment and media wil continue to operate, hydra-like. The establishment has to be purged and purged ruthlessly from day one.

stephen

TGIF: Talking of charmed circles don't the Boy, Dave and the "Sinister" Steve Hilton all share God Children. This must make it very difficult for our Dave to despense with Boy George's and "Sinister" Steves' services if it looks as if they may loose the election for the Tories! A number of people both blogging on the CH and elsewhere in the party are now waking up to this awful prospect. Come on Dave show us your mettle!

Maggie

And Alastair Darling's qualifications for Chancellor? Previous membership of the International Marxist Group and the British section of the Trotskyist Fourth International followed by a short spell as an Edinburgh solicitor.

Moriarty

I note that the editorial piece in this month's Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society fails to give a ringing endorsement to Osborne. And there's a piece on the mind-body problem that doesn't even mention him - not once!!

Truly damning stuff....

Gary Williams

DavidDP,

"Based on the last couple of years, hardly anyone in the City appears to have a serious background in economics."

Great idea that you've got there: some ships went down, so let's blame every sailor.
Our economic predicament has been building for at least 15 years. The culprits responsible for it include a small % of the people in the mortgage industry, banks, institutional investors, ratings agencies, regulating authorities and governments, and none was exclusive to the UK. Unfortunately, the key people (Brown, Goodwin, etc.) had influence vastly disproportionate to their talent.
There are loads of people in the City who would do a good job as Chancellor, because their priority would be economics, not politics.

Paul B

I`m with Fergus. He-GO- doesnt need to be economist, businessman or anything. All he needs, just like Mrs T, is an understanding of how to balance a budget, make ends meet and be committed (as a Conservative) to smaller and more efficient Government. I do not want him cosying up to any special interest, except that of the hard working, over taxed and over regulated British (and immigrant) working person. Its the over cosiness between Business, City and Nulab, that has led to the present troubles. Ledts hope GO sorts them out. Who cares if no one like him. It matters not a jot if he is good at his job.

stephen

Judging by the story today about Ken Clarke leading the charge against NuLabour on the Economy and Boy George being confined to running the campaign; the City is getting its way, rightly IMHO. Old Market Men always used to say you can't fart against thunder!