Ex-editor sets banking agenda – and £100 says he’ll win the climate debate too

The sun shines warmly in south-west France, and rabbit bouillabaisse is the pièce de résistance of a New Year lunch at which Nigel Lawson is a fellow guest. The former chancellor and Spectator editor divides his time between his home in the Gers, the Global Warming Policy Foundation which he chairs, and the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards on which he has been sitting alongside the new Archbishop, Justin Welby — who he calls ‘my new friend, an excellent man’.

We agree that the argument on banking reform is moving Lawson’s way. As banks continue to rack up huge fines — £2.5 billion between RBS and UBS for Libor-rigging and HSBC for money-laundering — the Lawson view that retail banking should be completely separated from the dangers and temptations of investment banking is gaining momentum. The commission’s first findings before Christmas proposed ‘electrifying the ring-fence’: that is, giving regulators power to demand full separation in any bank that tries to sneak under the rather weak barrier erected by George Osborne in response to the 2011 Vickers Report.