Personal Blogs

There's a wonderful scene in The Life of Brian in which the People's Front of Judea sit around endlessly discussing the need to take action, rather than actually taking any. If you haven't seen it for a while and your memory needs refreshing, here it is.

This is exactly how our political leaders are dealing with the recent revelations of rampant corruption within the banking sector. It is clear that action is required. But instead, our political leaders are sitting around talking about it.

So what action is required? It's pretty simple really. There is excellent prima facie evidence that fraud has happened on a massive scale, and those responsible need to be prosecuted.

When I say those responsible, I mean not only the traders who were actually perpetrating the fraud, but also the entire board of directors of Barclays, and indeed any other banks found to have been joining in. Traders would not be breaking the rules on this kind of scale if the directors of the company had set a culture of honesty, rather than one of greed.

I am not a lawyer, so I'm not sure which specific offences may have been committed, but it seems obvious that if the allegations we've heard in the media have any basis whatsoever, then any half decent prosecutor ought to be able make a pretty good case under either the Fraud Act 2006, the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, or (particularly in the case of the directors) the Companies Act 2006.

Prosecutions, with meaningful penalties (ie imprisonment) for those found guilty, would send an important message that this kind of thing is not acceptable. Directors of other banks would act pretty sharpish to clean up their corporate cultures if they thought that they could be held personally liable for any wrongdoing that happened on their watch. Fining the bank just doesn't cut it: what that actually means is that ordinary people saving for their pensions are the ones who get hurt, as I've written before. I honestly believe that going after the directors in this way would solve a lot of problems.

But that doesn't seem to be what our politicians are doing about it. On the one side, the People's Front of Judea Conservative Party are arguing that there needs to be an inquiry led by a senior politician. But the Judean People's Front Labour Party disagree, and insist that the ludicrous and transparent ploy to kick this issue into the long grass inquiry must be led by a judge. This kind of petty squabbling suits the political parties nicely, as they love to be seen to disagree, to keep up the narrative that there is somehow an important difference between them.

In reality, however, both political parties are united against the common enemy, the Romans ordinary British people. Setting up inquiries, or even better, arguing about how to set up an inquiry, is simply a way of avoiding taking any action.

Let's face it, politicians and bankers have a lot in common. It's not that long since MPs were perpetrating fraud on a massive scale in the form of claiming expenses to which they were not entitled. With the exception of a token number of politicians that you could count on the fingers of one hand who did actually get prosecuted, they got away with it. We already have a couple of token resignations from the board of directors at Barclays, but the bankers will probably get away with it too.

MPs and bankers are both dishonest elites who consider themselves above the law. Is it surprising that when the chips are down, they look out for each other?