Around Westminster with Rob - Bankers

It's back to bashing bankers this week and Fred Goodwin and Stephen Hester have been the chief targets. The public is still very upset by what happened in 2008 and the fall out since. There's a feeling that we're paying for the financial crisis but bankers are not. So the chance to kick a banker is too good an opportunity to miss. 

We have to be careful though that politicians, in reflecting public anger, don't go too far. Both Goodwin and Hester have had the whiff of lynchings about them. As Alistair Darling has said, we actually need a more structured plan about the criteria we are setting for going after people. I'm certainly not going to defend Fred Goodwin, but his actions have been ranked alongside treason, torture and murder by stripping him of his knighthood. Is he really equivalent to Mugabe or Blunt?

He is certainly guilty of huge mistakes and incompetence. But he wasn't alone in that in the banking sector. Indeed there were equally massive mistakes made by Government and Gordon Brown. Should Brown be thrown out of the Commons or denied an honour in due course? He is equally culpable as Fred Goodwin. How far do we want to spread this? 

My concern is that if we spend too much time on this, it will lead to bucketloads of envy, spite and hatred. It will prove a distraction and be completely counter productive in the overall battle to rescue the economy from the debt overwhelming it. It will also send the wrong message to foreign investors and business people around the world. 

Britain needs to be in a position where it is open for business, where it welcomes and applauds wealth and job creators, where it celebrates successful entrepreneurs. Where people do wrong they should pay for it but against a common and agreed set of standards that we all buy in to. As Fred Goodwin and Gordon Brown demonstrated, it is all to easy to destroy wealth, much more difficult to create it.  The UK needs to keep its eye on the ball.