Playing with fire

The Guardian this morning was offering the headline, "Cameron calls for reform of banking regulations", while Conservative Home is retailing a comment attributed to Cameron that, "Gordon Brown’s regulatory mechanism has comprehensively failed".

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A puzzling development

David Cameron, according to the BBC, has rushed in to add his voice to sages such as Jim O'Neill, chief economist of Goldman Sachs.

Arriving at the Conservative Party conference venue in Birmingham, the BBC reported him as saying he wanted to give the Bank of England "sweeping new powers to rescue failing banks" and would also give the Bank "a new role of monitoring both consumer and company debt."

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You can't take anything they are saying seriously, they are just a PR/Spin machine, saying what is needed, as and when required .

Look at how Hague has trotted out this tired old tart of an arguement , to keep the sceptics shut up during the conference.

These people don't do detail.

Another shot to the Telegraph:

Sir,

I believe leading figures within the Conservative party have criticised the financial regulatory regime in this country and pinned the blame on Gordon Brown. I advise the Conservative party to cease this line of attack immediately because if they actually do their homework will find that a great deal of financial regulation comes from the European Union, and we might find that they propose something for a future manifesto only to be told be some European dignitary that a prospective British government does not have the power to action their words. But we've been here before with Michael Howard and immigration. Thanks to the few Europhiles within the Conservative party, they don't do "Europe" for fear of a public spat. Thanks to these Europhiles, the transfer of governmental power to Brussels is not examined openly and the merits or otherwise not subject to scrutiny. Thanks to these Europhiles, there is no opposition to European political integration and the death of British government within mainstream British politics.

The Tory stance on the EU reminds me of being a child and screaming "Behind you!" in pantomimes. It wasn't until much later, of course, that I realised the hero or heroine had only been pretending not to notice the danger glaring at them from upstage, and had only affected not to hear our warning shouts. Cameron and Co almost certainly know what's upstage behind them - but treat us like an audience of children. They forget at their peril that pantomime audiences contain many grown-ups, who understand basic acting and stagecraft.

It occurs to me that there is also a strong element of Tory tribalism at play. Such is the determination to oust Brown that everything - every failure and every event - must be blamed on him. To bring in the EU element is "raining on their parade", diluting the culpability and, in some senses, transferring some of it to them. They most decidedly don't want to "do Europe" therefore, because they feel it weakens the attack on Brown.

It weakens the attack on Brown, only in is as much as the next question, will always be, "well what are you going to do about it", to which they can only mumble and look like idiots, with their current policy of, in but not run by etc.

The Tory's are the worst of all the 3 main parties on Europe. The Lib-Dums have never hidden their enthusiasm and Labour long ago embraced it, even though the evidence against being a member, piles up almost hourly, though that kind of situation, hasn't stopped either of them supporting other crackpot ideas.

Meanwhile the Tory's continue to be neither one or the other. It's painfully apparent, that if it wasn't for their grassroot's hatred of the EU, far too many of the MP's would be as eager as the Lib-Dums and even worse that enthusiasm would not be ideological, but purely from self interested greed. After all haveing no legislative power and thus nothing to actually do, allows far more time for peruseing the John Lewis website, followed by a very long, lobbyist paid for lunch and reluctantly accepting yet another consultancy position, along with loads of non declarable freebies.

Sorry FU but I dont think that the Tories are so enthused about the EU. They are like Herod and his limitations of power. I bet they are envious of senators in the US. I would hazard they have less power than a Duma rep.