Bonus points

Not all bankers are bad people. Not all banks are surviving only with the support of the billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money. Not all bankers’ bonuses are rewards for failure.

It is important to state these things, obvious though they may be, because Downing Street has undoubtedly poured petrol on the bonfire of rage about bankers’ bonuses as a tactic to deflect public discontent over Gordon Brown’s handling of the economic crisis — a strategy that backfired when it emerged that a former Brown adviser, Sir James Crosby, had allegedly sacked someone for warning about the risks HBOS was taking. This week’s Treasury select committee show trial — like the equivalent Congressional hearings in Washington — was much more about ritual humiliation of former bank chiefs than about extracting technical evidence of their business failings. Soon the Prime Minister really will be the only person in this story not to have publicly said ‘Sorry’.