Author: |Posted: 11:19 am on 28/09/09
Category: Gary Gibbon on Politics
There are some monster bonuses coming down the tracks in the City and the government is trying to get its defences in place.
Alistair Darling will today tell the conference here that he’s going to talk to the bankers and tell them to restrain themselves this Christmas.
There’s a new law in the offing but it won’t be ready in time. It would defer bonuses and only allow them to be paid when the assets traded have made money, not crashed. read more
Author: |Posted: 10:39 am on 28/09/09
Category: Faisal Islam on Economics
Populism does not come more de-robed than what we will get on bankers from Labour’s pre-election conference.
It starts today with the Chancellors speech. There will be an elaboration of the bank bashing theme. read more
Author: |Posted: 3:24 pm on 15/09/09
Category: Gary Gibbon on Politics
A small demo greeted the opening of the Prime Minister’s speech – some delegates held up “no cuts” signs until their arms got tired.
It was a generic sign for all occasions and who can blame them? No one knows what the cuts will amount to… we will learn more in the Pre-Budget Report and beyond.
Mr Brown says the choice (already lost count how many times he uses that word) at the election is between the “people’s priorities” and back to the 1980s.
The cuts quotes are in the script as promised – Mr Brown’s aides insist the cuts story is all a figment of the media’s imagination. read more
Author: |Posted: 11:56 am on 08/09/09
Category: Gary Gibbon on Politics
David Cameron is speaking in the very room where Gordon Brown launched his uncontested leadership campaign in 2007.
He is announcing cuts in ministerial salaries, ministerial cars and MPs’ perks, like subsidised food and drink prices in the Palace of Westminster.
He believes he must do this to have credibility when he announces planned cuts in public spending.
As he puts it, this is about “taking the whole country with us”. It saves – he admits – a “pin prick” in terms of the deficit.
But once again he has an eye-catching, crowd-pleasing mini-announcement read more
Author: |Posted: 12:40 pm on 07/09/09
Category: Gary Gibbon on Politics
There will be more tomorrow from Alistair Darling on the government’s plans to outline cuts in public services, in the James Callaghan lecture in Cardiff.
The Chancellor wanted to go further on balancing the books than No. 10 allowed him to at the Pre-Budget Report last autumn.
Now he feels – after some lengthy conversations with Gordon Brown over the summer – he has got his way. In the next Pre-Budget Report in the coming weeks and in the months after that, there will be detailed plans for going beyond the £35bn in “efficiency savings” which was as far as No.10 wanted to go originally. read more
Author: |Posted: 6:05 pm on 18/06/09
Category: Faisal Islam on Economics
Post-meltdown Mansion House was always going to be a little different from the traditional orgy of self-congratulation, backslapping, and an ever lighter regulatory touch.
But in the end the bruising speech came from the governor of the Bank of England rather than the chancellor of the exchequer.
Author: |Posted: 1:57 pm on 17/06/09
Category: Faisal Islam on Economics
It’s the Mansion House speech tonight, and it comes on a day when unemployment numbers on the claimant count went up by much less than expected.
The chancellor himself is the most high profile example of this. Just a fortnight ago, his own team were unsure as to whether he would be delivering tonight’s landmark speech to City grandees.
Author: |Posted: 3:36 pm on 09/06/09
Category: Faisal Islam on Economics
Today the chancellor is going into the lion’s den to defend the bankers.
Europe feels that Britain failed to regulate the City ‘casino’ properly, and helped stoke the financial disaster that caused the recession across Europe.
The European Commission has come up with proposals that would give two continent-wide institutions the ultimate ability to regulate individual banks, including British ones.
Author: |Posted: 11:15 am on 05/06/09
Category: Snowblog
To answer my own initial question: Purnell has broken from the pack. He has done what David Miliband, conceivably Andy Burnham, and maybe John Hutton (of whom more in a moment), might have done and must have been thinking of doing.
Purnell has plunged a knife that has been waiting for such an exercise for some considerable time.
Author: |Posted: 9:59 am on 05/06/09
Category: Gary Gibbon on Politics
New rumour is that Gordon Brown didn’t actually decide to keep Alistair Darling in place until this morning and that an early morning conversation with Peter Mandelson swung it.
That won’t do much for Mandelson/Balls relations, which had been patched up since Lord Mandelson’s return to government.
Ed Balls will be feeling frustrated that his hopes of moving into No. 11 have been frustrated by two Blairites – one working with Gordon Brown, one quitting the Cabinet.
