The momentum for a public inquiry into banking is growing. The Daily Mail front page demands ‘Put Bankers In the Dock’. While Ed Miliband has given an interview (£) to The Times in which he calls for an inquiry into the ‘institutional corruption in the City’. Miliband thinks that this inquiry should be tasked with drawing up a code of conduct for investment bankers equivalent to the one governing solicitors. Bankers who breached this code would be struck off.
Now, many will say that Labour have a cheek lecturing on banking regulation given the total failure of the new system they introduced. James Chapman also reports that ‘government sources suggested Bank officials and members of the last Government had questions to answer about whether they were aware of attempts to depress the Libor rate at the height of the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009’. If this did happen, then it would make this crisis extremely serious for Labour.
But it will be politically difficult for David Cameron to keep knocking back calls for an inquiry if they grow louder in the coming days, the last thing he’ll want to look like is if he’s defending the bankers or blocking the truth from coming out. So far, though, both Cameron and Clegg’s offices have sounded highly sceptical of the idea of an inquiry, believing that it would just slow down the coming investigations.
Comments