I Have Managed To Infuriate The Bank

The Economy Has Become Seriously Unbalanced. Its Growth Has Not Been Driven By Investment Or By Overcoming Britain's Long-standing Weaknesses In Investment And Productivity, Particularly Skills. Instead, There Has Been A Binge Of Debt-financed Consumer Spending.

On Banks, I Make No Apology For Attacking Spivs And Gamblers Who Did More Harm To The British Economy Than Bob Crow Could Achieve In His Wildest Trotskyite Fantasies, While Paying Themselves Outrageous Bonuses Underwritten By The Taxpayer. There Is Much Public Anger About Banks And It Is Well Deserved.

The Robert Mugabe School Of Economics Provides A Salutary Warning About Uncontrolled Monetary Expansion In Generating Hyper-inflation. The Road To Harare Is Not As Long As We Might Hope.

Regulators Are A Backstop: They Don't Own Banks. The Governance At The Top Of Our Leading Banks Has Been Shown To Be Lamentably Weak. No One At The Top Of Barclays Will Take Responsibility For Systemic Abuse.

The Two Policies That Ken Clarke Is Most Famous For Are His Opposition To The Iraq War And Being A Very Defensible And Quite Courageous Pro-european. These Are Both Policies He Shares With Us.