If this is culture change, it's glacially slow. Five years after Northern Rock signalled a banking collapse that impoverished nations, there is no reckoning. Citizens are impotently angry but business as usual prevails. David Cameron emits half-hearted indignation: the banks will be semi-split, and not until 2019. Meanwhile, testosterone-fuelled silverbacks eat what they kill in under-supervised dealing rooms, skimming fortunes from everyone else's endeavour. So far the remedies are cough drops for cancer.
The biggest beast strides off with £100m, plus another possible £20m goodbye money. He is not struck off, nor abashed, not a bit. Is that a master of the universe, that charmless prevaricator with less self-awareness than an ape? These princelings' characters are malformed by a lifetime of courtiers' flattery. Politicians face hourly reminders that they are mortal, but not the denizens of the high towers of finance. The FSA signalled unease about the cultural failings of Diamond's leadership four months ago, yet the board clung on to him even after that £290m fine.
The Financial Times writer John Gapper quotes one ex-banker's thinking: "It would be a very good thing if an awful lot of people lost their jobs in a lot of banks." A purge would indeed send out shock waves. Firebrand Stelios Haji-Ioannou, a major shareholder in easyJet, had the right idea this week in calling for Sir Michael Rake's ejection from the airline's chairmanship, for his role on the Barclays board. If the entire board of Barclays was sacked, not just from the bank but banished from all their multiple other posts and banned from future directorships, consider what a healthy fright would shudder through every complacent institution infected with the Barclays culture, with so many Barclays directors on the boards of regulators and standard-setters.
In the great Barclays purge, let's start with Rake. He loses his chairmanships of BT and easyJet, and his directorship of McGraw-Hill Inc. Away go his seats on the advisory boards of the CBI, Soas, Chatham House and Bupa. Off goes his seat on the board of the Guards Polo Club. He gets the bum's rush from regulatory authorities too: he loses chairmanship of the Guidelines Monitoring Group (overseer of private equity), along with his seat on the DTI's US/UK Regulatory Taskforce. Quis custodiet?
Sir Richard Broadbent, Barclays deputy chair, loses his chairmanship of Tesco. Out goes his place on the board of Relate, and his partnership at the improbable Centre for Compassionate Communication.
Non-executive director Reuben Jeffery III would be sacked as chief executive of Rockefeller & Co. This former George W Bush under-secretary loses his post at the Center for Strategic and International Studies: that derives from his time as special adviser to Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. Someone wiser might not boast of that epic calamity on their CV. Look now at Sir Andrew Likierman. This Barclays director is sacked as chair of the National Audit Office. What kind of an auditor is he? But above all, he loses his post as highest paid vice-chancellor, dean of the London Business School, where he teaches the next generation the culture he oversaw at Barclays.
I will spare you the details of each Barclays panjandrum, but for these: Naguib Kheraj, vice-chair of the bank and chair of the Aga Khan Foundation, is sacked from the NHS Commissioning Board, where he oversees Andrew Lansley's redisorganisation. Marcus Agius, former Barclays chair, sits on the BBC Trust. Alison Carnwath, chair of Barclays remuneration committee, which set Diamond's pay, sits on 12 other boards. Thus the banking culture of hyper-excess spreads, suggesting it's what everyone does, the way of the world. So the BBC director general's pay span into the stratosphere, or the London Business School tells students how to feel entitled to mammoth rewards.
We need know nothing of these directors' individual talents or deficiencies: they are all responsible for a bank that went out of control. Whether they were all "physically sick" together with Diamond when they heard the news of Libor-cheating in their trading rooms that inflated bonuses, who knows. But here is an establishment web, a hard-wired network of interests intertwined with regulators and ethics-setters where a thorough sacking would send an electric culture-change signal.
Don't hold your breath. The Bank of England has just shovelled another £50bn quantitative easing into the pockets of the banks, the bourne from which no cash returns, while the British Chambers of Commerce again this week called for the money to go instead to a national investment bank for small business.
Ed Miliband made sure Labour owns the turf on reforming capitalism: George Osborne's sneering smears only rebound as Labour pulled further ahead in polls. But to escape his past, Ed Balls needs to jump into the future. With the EU adopting a financial transaction tax by December, Labour should call for the UK to join, raising £30bn a year. Call for total bank separation now, not in seven years. Ban bonuses. Turn the UK from tax haven to safe haven of financial probity.
Financial writer John Kay reminds how cleaning up UK casinos, contrary to warnings, made London the most honest and popular city for high rollers. The Lloyd's scandal strengthened London insurance by cleaning up to flourish. Would finance flee? Broker Tullett Prebon warned it would leave, but couldn't get their traders to go. Call out Cameron for refusing to join EU regulation. Labour needs to jump ahead to where the voters are. Then Ed Balls can shed memories of Gordon Brown's City-worshipping days.
Written by Polly Toynbee for The Guardian
Illustration by Satoshi Kambayashi
Written by Polly Toynbee for The Guardian
Illustration by Satoshi Kambayashi
