Cameron made his choice yesterday.
I make clear, the direction of travel in Europe is not one I like. But he simply chose to leave. And he did so for all the worst reasons.
He chose to support the City.
He demanded the right to exploit the working people of the UK on behalf o the City.
He demanded the right to undermine the economies of Europe and the regulation it wishes to establish over errant banks.
Cameron's choice was a simple one: he declared the UK a tax haven. A land for the very rich. A land where abuse is not just tolerated but encouraged. A land where the ordinary people are treated with contempt.
It was the wrong choice. It was made for the wrong reason. It's a choice we will bitterly regret.
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Well put Richard. Agreed on all points.
I gather that Cameron agreed on everything in the proposals EXCEPT that relating to regulation of the financial ‘services’ sector, arguably the only hopeful thing in the whole, otherwise dismally disappointing, deal.
Are we really surprised?
Today’s editorial in the Guardian sums it up pretty well (IMO): http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/09/cameron-and-europe-the-english-outpatient
As someone with dual British & French nationality, I feel doubly let down by these clowns. But at least I have some hope on my side of the channel that Sarko (and his band) will be defeated in June.
@anrigout
You make a very good point as does Bill Kruse below …
Unfortunately for 95% of the population ”regulation of the financial services industry” is not a consideration for any UK government.
This is because government is inextricably involved in a Masonic type conspiracy based on the City which allows incredible wealth to be created for a chosen few; and to introduce legislation which may interfere with these processes would threaten the whole neoliberal “establishment”.
A huge PR budget, often subliminal in execution, is relentlessly deployed to make believe ordinary mortals that the “City is Good”. The wonders of the City and its gyrating satellites of tax havens are extolled by ornamental pundits from quasi “respectable” media outlets — not that any media outlet or spokesperson based in tax havens could be labelled as respectable, honest or truthful!
The reality is that the City and its tax havens are corrupt and evil and until the whole rotten edifice is dismantled and chopped into tiny pieces there will be no ”regulation of the financial services industry”.
You have to wonder what planet Murphy is on. The last couple of days was about Britain ceasing to exist, along with France, Germany etc.
The project, compact and all those other nonsense names avoids is about creating a new country. Britain would cease to exist.
If he’s attacking the Prime Minister to cloak his support for it, he’s just one more of those unelected elites determined to create a superstate.
If he’s attacking the Prime Minister because he instinctively dislikes the Conservatives and supports another party, then he hasn’t really anything to say.
Either way it was feeble lead in the pen that wrote the comment above.
I’ve made clear my reservations about the Merkel Sarkozy deal – you ignore that fact
But the fact I would want a different EU deal does not mean I can’t criticise Cameron for ducking out
The only solution to seeking to get this right was to be at the table – that’s what he’s got wrong
This is not a game of either/or
RM : “was to be at the table ”
I don’t know if you’ve missed the comments of ‘Merkosy’ over recent weeks but they have made it abundantly clear that they would not agree to any UK concessions whatsoever – so whether we are at the table or not is not relevant as a deal was not avaialable, which is why Cameron choice to do what he did.
Whatever you feel about the financial services industry, I fundamentally object to the EU taxing the UK to fund a currency or rather a politcal project which is doomed. Even Germany are printing DM’s “just in case”. That says it all.
Given the hysteria and straightforward misionformation in this comment I think it should be read for what it is – a load of opinionated rubbish
It’s difficult to get the facts on the proposed treaty changes. But as far as I can make out from reading today’s press, they included nothing that would have been binding on the UK, as a non euro-zone country. As I now understand it, Cameron was demanding was not exemption from new regulations to which the UK could become subject under a new treaty, but exemptions for the city from existing or future regulations under the current Treaty to which the UK are or will be subject.
In other words, an attempt at blackmail: I’ll agree to a new treaty in support of your efforts to save (maybe!) the euro on condition that you exonerate me from some of my existing obligations. An attempt which failed spectacularly. Only Cameron came to this summit with the (sole) objective of making profit from the problems of the euro. Nothing was gained for the UK and, not surprisingly, much ill-will towards the UK was generated in (the rest of) Europe.
Or have I misunderstood?
You have it right
That’s exactly what he demanded e.g. exemption from hedge fund rules already passed
Total own goal by him
The billion dollar financial “scandals”, including MF Global, AIG and Lehman Bros all went through the City. And it is the City that helped pay for Cameron’s election.
In attempting to protect the City’s lax regulatory environment and the fund managers that “thrive” within it Cameron has severely overestimated the health of the UK economy with has a debt to GDP ratio of 1000% with the ratio for UK banks of debt to GDP at 400% – a 6 trillion dollar debt.
Cameron has now isolated Britain from the global power system and anyone with UK bank shares should be feeling rather nervous.
Trust Cameron to do the right thing for completely the wrong reasons! 🙂
John I have my doubts about whether the deal signed in Brussels will actually be deliverable. However, I also doubt whether ‘opting out’ will give ,or retain if you wish, our sovereignty. The old levers of economic control have disappeared, largely as a result of the Washington Consensus, so that ‘markets’ can operate with the minimum of regulation and maximum of profits i.e. not in the service of electorates but of shareholders.
The old levers were the exchange rate, capital controls; interest rates (less effective than many think and, although the bank rate is still by the bank of England, international pressures play a part)taxation, which has to be low enough to avoid the rich being driven abroad; state enterprises and subsidies. I may have left some out but unless some of these are taken back how can you have ‘self determination?’
These are indeed the powers we should “repatriate”. And by “repatriate” I mean bring under democratic control.
Hasn’t the turning of the UK into a tax haven been one of Osborne’s goals all along? And it is no surprise that Cameron would back the City. This is the rule of the City, by the City and for the City….
The reality is that UK was always going to be caught between a German neoliberal ideologue and an Eton neoliberal ideologue.
This Merkosy treaty does not address the banking crisis, and it is still not clear how or in what form the EU will survive, let alone whether either Sarkosy or Merkel will be re-elected. The two Eds should be joining with the left, Occupy, and the anti-Gatts movements across the EU (and globally) to oppose both Merkosy and Osborne (the real power behind the throne) … not to mention the financial oligarchy and the shadow economy.
I suspect the two Eds will be eager to climb aboard any bandwagon that’s going so long as they’re firmly established as oligarchs at the end of the ride. They couldn’t care less about us. However, there’s still the interesting possibility that all conjecture will shortly be rendered academic by the complete blowing up of the Euro and thereafter the entire global banking system. No need to get too upset about anything yet then 🙂
I am afraid that the 2 Eds are spineless about this whole issue. We have to be aligned with our fellow Europeans because we are far too small and insignificant to survive on our own against the power of China and for the moment the US. The Eds should be arguing for a properly democartic EU and against the unelected Commission. The UK is now in a very dangerous place and as one of the much maligned ‘baby boomer’ generation, I am very concerned about the prospects for the younger generation. As Richard has stated all we have now is our status as a tax haven, and as Robert Peston makes clear in his new TV series the UK is more or less a place which assembles products rather than manufactures them from scratch.
Theresa. I too am very depressed about what on earth is going to happen to my children’s generation. And given what is happening in schools, I think that that cohort is facing huge difficulties too. In comparison to the coverage of the NHS, Gove is able to get away with dismantling the services for vulnerable children without comment. A teacher friend says that she has had no children with ME/CFS referred to her tutorial unit since the summer. Another friend runs a primary school attached unit for children with speech difficulties. She has taken to going out herself to identify pupils and then instructing the CC to refer them.
We need to cultivate what capabilities the people of this country have then. We also need the money to do that. Aptitude testing could identify capabilities and money, I remind everyone here, is just stuff you make up so providing a common local currency can be agreed upon it shouldn’t be too hard to get hold of.
“He demanded the right to undermine the economies of Europe and the regulation it wishes to establish over errant banks.”
Wasn’t one of the things he wanted the right to require banks hold more than 9% capital? And why exactly should all Euro denominated transactions take place in the Eurozone?
Could you imagine France doing anything that meant less support for its farmers, or Spain for its fishermen or Germany for its manafacturers?
This has the feeling to me of one of those events the effects of which will take years to understand.
More trollie rubbish. One wonders why Richard tolerates it.
It was the senior executive’s of the west’s banks and their captured “regulators” who caused the current crisis and it is they, not France’s farmers, Spain’s fishermen or Germany’s manufacturers, who must be brought to heel to prevent another.
The French and Germans are right on this issue, and all right thinking people know it. Britain’s stance is a disgrace and when the British business wakes up to the scale of the error Cameron has made, he will be forced to U-turn.
belgraviadave,
If it is all Britain’s fault then why are the rumours all swirling about a major European bank being on the brink this week? And why is requiring banks to hold LESS capital (as the French and Germans want) favouring the banks?
By the way, whenever anyone says “all right thinking people know it”, they are admitting their argument is weak. It is not clear to me at all that “all right thinking people” think the French and Germans are right about anything.
It doesn’t look like Dave played his cards as well as he might have, but everyone knows that Sarkozy hates the British (he must be the only educated French person alive who doesn’t admit to speaking English), is a shameless populist and is desperate to do anything to shore up his support at home, whereas Merkel is totally out of her depth.
And I have not heard one commentator who thinks the problems in the EU have in any way been tackled, or why closer fiscal integration, including a right for Brussels to veto national budgets, without any public reference, is in the interests of democracy.
The whole thing is a carve up of the most horrible kind and I’ll stand by what I said in the first post: it will be many years before we know whether it is better to be inside or outside.
The reason for less capital is to encourage lending to get investment going
It’s Keynesian
Cameron objects
He’s anti jobs and anti business, except finance
The EU is a mess – undoubtedly – but don’t for a minute think that means Cameron is right
According to today’s FT far from “wanting to undermine regulation on banks”, as you say, Cameron wanted to ensure that the banks were properly capitalized and regulated.
“He also wants a separate protocol to protect the City of London from excessive EU regulation, including an agreement to let Britain enforce bank capital requirements that are higher than the proposed European maximum.”
As you are aware the Vickers Commission has gone further in proposing measures to rein in the banks than anything proposed by the EU.
Let’s just take one of your issues…..Vickers…..which promises reform in 8 years
Oh yes, he’s going out of his way for reform all right
Let’s put it simply – the City are a bunch of crooks and, so far as we’re aware, French fishermen and German manufactureres aren’t. If a British fisherman wants to steal all his customer’s fish, he can’t get away with that endevour simply by opening an office at a French fishing port and stealing them from there. If a British manufacturer wants to steal a rival’s designs and so forth, he can’t simply open up an office in Germany and have the employees there do the stealing. The same regulations, broadly speaking, apply in Fance and Germany as apply here in those industries. If an American banker, however, wants to sell crap credit default swaps, for example, so bad they’d be illegal in the States, all he has to do to get round it is open an office in the City of London and carry on from there because, conveniently enough, there’s no regulations covering that kind of thing here. Ask Joe Cassano, head of AIG, the big American insurance company which almost went down in the credit crunch. It wasn’t their American office that was the problem, took risks beyond imagining, beyond any sanity. No, it was their UK office, and I’ll let you guess where that was. You may have heard recently that MF Global have lost rather a lot of client’s money, money that was in their keeping and considered as safe as… well, as safe as money in the bank. They lost it, and say they can’t find it, and to cut a long story short they lost it through London too. What the City offers the financial community is an environment where, simply put, normal rules of commerce, indeed rules of law, no longer apply. Want to rob your customers? Come on down! Fancy absconding into a tax haven with the pension fund? Sign here! Activities like these can and do bring short term profits for the perpetrators and their assistants but in the longer term they bankrupt the entire known universe, which we’re part of, I’ll remind you. It’s this scurvy bunch of crooks that have hired Cameron, through the so-called electoral process, to protect their interests above all, above the interests of the rest of Europe and far and away above the interests of the British electorate, who really don’t figure in this at all, never have. If French fishermen and German manufacturers cause problems, it’s likely to be local and that’s all. This lot, the lot Cameron’s protecting, will blow up the global economy if they aren’t stopped. There’s simply no comparison, therefore.
I agree there are scurvey crooks in the city but the same is true of German manufacturers. Are you not aware that a big chunk of Greek public debt is down to their inordinate expenditure on military hardware made by German manufacturers and funded by German banks. Guess what, although the Germans are keen to see Greek public expenditure slashed on social programmes that doesn’t run to military expenditure, Merkosy say that needs to be maintained because the French are in it too up to the tail coats of the germans. Of course they need this pointless expenditure maintained to keep their arms industry and associated bankers from crashing. When it comes to nation states there is very little moral high ground that I can see, they are all out to protect their own turf and will do whatever dirty deals they need to achieve that. Thats why I think Cameron did the right thing albeit for the wrong reasons. By the time we’re out of Europe, jettisoned Scotland, the crown dependencies, the “Great” prefix and “UK” perhaps we can be just Britain and get rid of the rest of the trappings of empire, including most of all “punching above our weight” in foreign affairs and finance.
Then we can move to a negative growth green economy and have a decent society. Hopefully all those bankers and rich folk will then exit and parasitise someone else. Though a 50% unavoidable exit charge would slow them down a bit!
The City is a country within a country which may be (in theory) subject to UK law but in reality operates in an impenetrable milieu devoid of moral values and ethical principals.
Politicians of various hues (Gordon Brown included) have attempted to diminish this powerful command centre of greed, immorality and evil — but like some ancient, profane occult it contrives to keep its “knowledge” hidden in a Masonic grand lodge of sorcery, magick and alchemy that makes Aleister Crowley look like a choirboy.
It’s the world’s Great Beast reliant on its tax haven extremities that encircle and strangle the world’s financial systems. Cutting-off the Beast’s extremities would be emore effective than cutting-off its head; and that is why it fanatically guards its tax havens like a mythological ogre.
Forward men of courage and destroy these havens before they destroy us.
It pains me in one way to say this because I’m not sure I trust the political class that is springing up here but I think you might find that by these kinds of decisions Cameron will also preside over the breakup of the UK. I count myself as an Anglophile Scot (with some Welsh ancestry) but I don’t like the way England seems to be changing. I don’t want to particularly list any reason why, it’s just simply that the mood music coming from an ascendent Tory party plays very badly here. They are going to drag your country down with their ideology if this continues. Please don’t let it happen…
NB: In the above context the words “principal” and “principle” are equally relevant!
Slightly off topic but pertinent to the financial crisis that presently engulfs us …
Sub-prime borrowers (victims of sub-human bankers) are often thought of as a low income group with little job security — and there are plenty of them.
Yet there are also hundreds of thousands of people in another important (often ignored) sub-prime borrower group represented by (married) “professional” couples whose joint incomes are £200,000 a year or more. This level of income often encourage extravagant lifestyle preferences; including the ridiculously desirable residence, two Mercs, private education, villa in Spain and other status labels — all supplied by greedy bankers who have (yet again) overvalued credit worthiness.
Professionalism in one discipline is no indication of a skill in another and a staggeringly and widespread ineptitude in basic management of personal finances has resulted in many from ALL income groups adopting a standard of living way beyond their relative means.
In the past unscrupulous bankers have ruthlessly exploited every demographic regardless of ability to pay; but when things go pop in the higher income groups, and they do at an alarming rate, the whack on the bank’s balance sheet is considerably greater than that caused by an average sub-prime borrower.
Q: Why doesn’t government “educate” ALL people in financial matters?
A: Because their friends-in-finance may object!
Reality is that there will be an exodus of international banks, from the city to Paris and Frankfurt. Europe is much nigger and too important to ignore. The city made sense only as part of Europe not against it. When choices are made it will be Europe instead of UK.
So this defense of protecting the city against taxes is not valid, because slowly there will be no city. plus if tax is so important, why not start collecting the existing taxes now.
“The reason for less capital is to encourage lending to get investment going”
Isn’t the depletion of capital buffers and overlending to consumers and businesses what got us into this mess? There is an extraordinary in your position on this that you seem to be completely bind. On the one hand you blame the banks for the crisis – that may or may not be correct, but is a legitimate position. What is then inexplicable is to advocate even less regulatory control over banks’ capital reserves – in effect trying to cure a borrowing disease by more borrowing.
There are many reasonable people – Will Hutton for example – and other more qualified, like Nobel laureates, arguing as I do
No one is advocating less control
What is being advocated is more, better quality lending
There is no folly in that
Just some hope for an economic future
Rather than the hope of the blind leading the prejudiced, which is what you seem to be offering
FIONA
These powers weren’t “given away” to the EU. If that is what you are saying, They were abandoned -in common with all other countries after the end of Bretton Woods-but some as policies to fulfill the policies advocated by the Washington Consensus e.g capital controls or the policy of light touch regulation. They could be resumed unilaterally but would face formidable opposition at home and abroad. I would hope we could alter the financial landscape with other countries in Europe.
We have to hope for a Courageous social democratic Europe
It’s a hope
The City is the world capital of fraud and Cameron is funded by it..
What makes him think that he can ward off the inevitable wave of Brussels regulations which will now be aimed at destroying the City?
The eurozone countries are sitting on 10,000 tonnes of gold.
Whilst the UK has 300!
Not too difficult to predict who will win this battle.
Although it may well prove a pyrrhic victory ….
Reform of the financial services industry is crucial. The fact that 39% of the Pension funds go into management of funds is what puts people off in saving in this way. Instead if the investment was in local projects like hospitals, schools, work shops for start ups een dare I say a bank for micro credit loans, then the value and volume of savings would go up as well as direct investment into the community.
Exactly!
Business secretary Vince Cable spoke passionately in cabinet last Monday against making the small casino part of the City a vital national interest; why, he asked his colleagues, protect financial engineers and tax-evaders? He was ignored and furious when he learned what had happened. He will speak out aggressively against Cameron’s veto; his decision is whether to resign to do so or say so in office, courting his sacking
Hague underlines Clegg was totally outmanoeuvred “We were agreed on the negotiating position in advance”
Clegg said he had not been consulted on the details of Cameron’s negotiations with Europe. He told Andrew Marr that the first he heard about the veto was a 4am phone call on Friday morning with David Cameron.
Someone is not telling the truth. How come, Cameroon was given so much power by the Cabinet.
This is a total distraction, dis unity is the last thing we need. Europe can not be made a scapegoat of our economic problems.
As always, the Daily Mash has the best reporting:
“But as critics accused Britain of wanting to have its cake and eat it, experts stressed the cake would eventually eat Britain, s##t it out and then move to Hong Kong anyway.”
http://tinyurl.com/chj5mcp
whatever Cameron did or didn’t do on Friday, EU regulation is still applicable to the UK financial markets. And we are still fully paid up members of the EU. And Cameron continues to be a fully fledged europhile. So what has changed? Cameron went to the meeting on a hiding to nothing and came out appearing to be the hero to most of the voting public, with the added benefit of wrong footing Miliband and Clegg. And given that most of the chatter has diverted from the problems facing the Euro, it would seem he has done that bit of the EU a big favour. Ain’t politics strange!!!
If you can’t see the difference I’m very glad I don’t seek professional advice from you
you couldn’t afford me sunshine!
I think that says all we need to know about your practice
Chatter has just not disappeared, ask Italy who is paying way over the odds this week.
This is not a private school rugby match but serious problem, that 40% of our trade is with EU and things are not normal, but getting worse.
As an ethusiastic rugby player for some twenty years – before age forced retirement – and as an ex-public school boy (sorry Richard!) could you explain the difference between a “private school rugby match” and any other?
I have played against Doncater Miners Union (using the pit head changing facilities) and against a “top” school. The games and the people involved seemed pretty much the same to me.
Or am I an inverted snob?
Many people of us have been brainwashed (by an insidious and continual PR campaign) into believing that, since Thatcher destroyed the country’s manufacturing base, the City of London is the corner stone of the UK economy and that it must be protected at all times.
Q: Protected for who? A: The rich elite
Q: Protected from what? A: Interfering legislation
Cameron’s recent sojourn to Brussels is idealistically “sold” to the public as a mission to save British sovereignty and avoid unnecessary contact with a filthy foreign currency (and perhaps foreigners themselves). In reality it was a mission to attempt to save the City from anger rising in the rest of Europe .
But the PR machine keeps pumping out the bxllshit making us believe that the country has a wonderful and indispensable financial services industry that is as clean as the driven snow when the reality is that the shady City and its adoring gang of nauseating, flesh creeping tax havens is a place where the light of honesty rarely shines.
Like a chicken the City is the head and its tax havens the legs.
Chop of its head and it will still runs around.
Chop of its legs and it will have nowhere to go.
ISLE OF MAN
It will be revealed to the Manx (so-called) parliament this morning (13th Dec 2011) that the Isle of Man is officially recognised by Spanish law as being a “tax haven”.
The PSG applauds this decision.
http://www.three.fm/news/isle-of-man-news/tynwald-to-hear-spain-recognises-isle-of-man-as-tax-haven-4633/
In recent years the Spanish Hacienda (equiv.HMRC) has enthusiastically clamped down and caught-up with some persistent tax cheats and anything that has the whiff of an “off shore centre” is treated with contempt and as a facility to commit crime.
That the Isle of Man is now recognised in Spanish law as a tax haven represents real progress. Soon other EU countries will follow the Spanish example and start introducing laws to make life increasingly difficult for the tax havens — where all roads lead to and from the City of London.
THREE CHEERS FOR THE EXAMPLE SET BY SPAIN.
COME ON THE REST OF EUROPE!
..yes, and in the context of Prime Minister Cameron’s recent stance which so pleased the Eurosceptics of his party (and the Daily Mail) one might expect the UK’s representations on the behalf of its Crown Dependency to be received.. frostily.
I keep reading that the EU propsed FT tax would be paid to Brussles. Most of this money would be collected in London and so the UK would pay a disproportionate amount. Can anyone tell me how far this is true, if at all?
It is true but also not true
Most Euro trading takes place in London – so the UK would collect the tax
But the Euro trading is for client in Europe
So the tax should be paid there
The argument is not as hard and fast as people would like to claim