I don’t understand you, really I don’t. The immediate cause of my bewilderment was a piece on this site, yesterday by Matthew Hancock MP, attacking Ed Balls. In normal circumstances, I would have offered to hold his coat, but Hancock wrote:
‘Balls takes positions he knows not to be true, like the ridiculous claim that taxes on banks are falling when in fact they are going up.’
On cue, this morning’s papers reported that
‘Barclays paid out just £113m in corporation tax in 2009, despite making a pre-tax profit of £11.6bn.’
Why does Hancock pretend otherwise? Why is he happy for his constituents to pay tax, the banks dodge?
More generally, what gives with the wider defence of the banks? Tories of all people ought to hate the bank bailout. Their every fibre ought to revolt against the state using public money to reward failure. The spectacle of traders fleecing shareholders should disgust them and drive them to the streets to support the demonstrations of UK Uncut. Yet from what I hear, all the resistance in Whitehall against the coalition imposing a British Glass-Steagall Act is coming from Conservatives. If you believe in free markets, you should have no problem with the government separating retail banking from speculative banking so that they can sink or swim on their own merits. You should suspect that the reason why banks do not want to be broken up is that they expect the taxpayer to bail them out if they should ruin the country again. You should be alert to the dangers of corporatism, crony capitalism and moral hazard. And yet you are the most vocal defenders of a parasitic vested interest that makes the public sector unions look like amateurs.
Why can’t you stand by your principles? What’s the matter with you? Please explain below, because, as I said, I am genuinely perplexed.
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