Cameron laps up Labour Co-op discomfort

People with information about the Co-op Bank need to come forward and help the inquiries, the PM said at question time, as he announced another inquiry – an independent investigation ordered by the Chancellor – was on the way.

The PM was delighting in blurring a few inquiries into one today. And he was being a bit premature about the independent inquiry in the process.

The Police inquiry is into alleged drug use.

The planned Financial Conduct Authority inquiry is an enforcement inquiry into whether rules and laws were broken by the Co-op Bank as a business.

The independent inquiry the PM announced was coming down the tracks was a broader “lessons learned” inquiry that can look into how the bank and its then regulator (the FSA) conducted themselves.

There is, by the way, another inquiry by the Co-op into what went wrong already commissioned and calls tonight from Tory councillors in Yorkshire to inquire into former Councillor Rev Paul Flowers’ conduct at Bradford council.

That’s possibly five inquiries bobbing around, but the one announced by the Prime Minister cannot actually get started until the enforcement one is completed. So it was a bit previous, but he just couldn’t stop himself.

The Prime Minister obviously doesn’t want a bank failure and wants the Co-op recovery plan under way to succeed, but he could not hide his glee at the prospect of an inquiry that, for once, threatens his Labour opponents more than his own reputation.

This won’t be Labour’s Leveson, but with the party’s close connection to the Co-op Bank, it has the potential to connect the party’s name in some gruesome headlines over time.

And the whole Co-op crisis also raises further questions about how Labour is going to afford a general election campaign. Its generous credit facility with the Co-op must now be a thing of the past, and that at a time when Ed Miliband’s funding reforms are potentially squeezing the Party’s union funding.

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