The Tories’ plan for regulating the banks

I’ve just flicked through the Tories’ new White Paper on banking regulation, which Osborne & Co. are touting as their “plan for sound banking”.  There’s much in there which has been trailed or suggested over the past few weeks, but a few new ideas as well.  I’ll refrain from going too far into the nitty-gritty, but here are my take-home points:

Attack, attack, attack.  Ok, it’s to be expected of a White Paper put together by Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, but the language used in the document is strikingly robust.  Entire sections (e.g. Part 1: What Went Wrong, pp.8-18) are devoted to atacking Gordon Brown’s handling of the economy, his tri-partite regulation system, and the debt bubble which expanded on the back of it – with the subsequent emphasis being on Not Letting It Happen Again.  At times, they slightly overplay their hand: for instance, using a Peter Lilley quote from 1997 as evidence for the Tories’ opposition to Brown’s regulatory system, without – of course – letting it be known that they didn’t complain too loudly for the next ten years.