Corporate governance

It all started at one of the Prime Minister’s monthly press conferences. Suddenly, in answer to a question, Gordon Brown named Sir Fred Goodwin, the now notorious former chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland, as the man who broke the bank. After the conference the press machine of Number 10 must have gone into action, for the next morning’s papers were full of pictures and stories of Fred, naming and shaming him as the father of the credit crunch. The publicity machine continued remorselessly day after day, as time went by and he and the other hapless chairmen and chief executives of failed banks were hauled before Commons committees to make abject apologies. It was a circus not seen since the days of the Soviet show trials.

The coup was worthy of Peter Mandelson, and perhaps it was actually his. At a stroke, all attention went from the government, whose primary responsibility the economy was, to a few individuals who ran banks.