It's all Balls!

The squeaky noise you hear of-stage left is Mr Ed Millibean MP (Wallis & Grommit – Lab) calling for a judge-led public inquiry into the Libor scam.

Why should he want this?

Well, first up he sees this as an opportunity to tar his supposed enemy, Dave Camshaft MP (Silly Party) with association with greedy banksters who donate humungous sums of other peoples’ money to the Tory Party in return for undisclosed favours. He is not at all interested in the actual outcome of a judicial inquiry. Leveson, dealing with much less complex issues, is heading for its first anniversary, so we can expect that the findings of an inquiry into the financial sector and its many and complex misdeeds would take so long that everyone would have lost all interest much earlier. And we will have moved on to the next deluge of unremitting bad news, such as the economic fall-out from the inevitable collapse of the Euro.

In any case, Barclays is the tip of the iceberg. It now seems that at least 20 global banks worldwide have been at it, so an inquiry would be both premature and limited.

But his actual target is his real enemy.

Step forward Ed Balls.

The biggest threat to Millibean’s somewhat shaky position as Leader of the Labour Party is a takeover bid by Mr and Mrs Balls. They would make a formidable combination and be very likely to send Dave off for an early bath if he doesn’t get his act together by 2015. Yvette Cooper is one of the best brains in the Commons and has top-level experience plus that unusual attribute in a politician, an attractive personality.

All this banking hanky-panky started on Broon’s watch when Balls was his understrapper-in-chief. If Millibean can taint Balls with the whole scandal, then Balls is yesterday.

All this is bad news for we mere mortals. Banker-bashing may be the present national sport, but  the Financial Services industry is of critical importance to the UK economy. You can be pretty certain that continuing assaults on it by grandstanding politicians concerned only with re-election will not be good for the economy. London is currently the world’s leading centre for international financial services. It employs thousands. It is probably the largest single tax-payer. And London subsides the rest of Britain to a huge extent.

If the politicians regulate financial services out of sight, which is what has tended to happen by over-reaction in the US to the Lehman fiasco, expect an  exodus to Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore and other jurisdictions that are totally indifferent to the views of anyone anywhere else.

There will be no judicial inquiry.