Will Brown get hit by the banking shrapnel?

So far as Brown is concerned, the biggest problem with this grilling of the bankers is that it will rebound, dangerously, on to him.  Despite the Government’s best efforts to pass the buck (see Alistair Darling’s article in the Indy today), there’s plenty of room for them to be embarrassed by the associations, friendships and working partnerships that the Treasury Select Committee is shining a light on.  The ever-alert Paul Waugh points out one of them over on his blog:

Yet today’s news from the Treasury Select Committee is the most damaging threat of all of to Mr Brown and Mr Darling’s judgement in relying on Sir James [Crosby, former chief exec of HBOS and a “favourite adviser” to Gordon Brown].

Former head of risk at HBOS Paul Moore alleges (under Parliamentary privilege allowed to the Committee) that Sir James sacked him after he tried to blow the whistle on the fact that the bank was expanding too fast and that its sales culture was overshadowing its risk management.