BORIS ATTACKS BANKS IN U-TURN
BORIS Johnson is prepared to haul bankers into City Hall to berate them over bonuses after he threw away his cheerleader outfit and attacked the City’s culture of “greed”.
In a massive U-turn that followed months of outspoken defence of banks and the City, Boris said he would take a harder line with the industry.
The Mayor of London – formerly the City’s self-styled champion – signalled the radical shift in a newspaper column yesterday and withdrew his previously unwavering support for the banking industry.
Describing bankers as “cockroaches”, he said that they should take responsibility for the financial crisis and forego massive bonuses in favour of public humility.
“The bankers whose high-rolling risk-taking triggered the recession have… their hands in their pockets – at least, their hands would be in their pockets if they were not stuffed with money. And when I say stuffed, I mean bulging… with the biggest bonuses you ever saw,” Johnson wrote in the Daily Telegraph.
He added: “How can they pretend that the world hasn’t changed? What blindness, what deafness, what Asperger’s afflicts them?”
In a dig at US investment banks JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, Johnson said his criticism was not limited to banks like RBS and Lloyds that have been propped up by the British state
“Even the mighty Goldman Sachs would have gone down the tubes, because it was a counter-party to so much of the debt,” he wrote. “Now, millions of hard-working people face being asked to work even longer and harder to pay for the economic crisis.”
And the Mayor of London appeared to signal his backing for a windfall tax on banks, a policy that Shadow Chancellor George Osborne hinted at during the Tory party conference. “How can any politician be expected to oppose such measures, when the banks refuse to learn?”
Yesterday, a spokesman for the Mayor said he was calling a meeting with bank bosses where he would put his concerns to them personally.
“Boris has been trying to gently warn the bankers for a while that if they don’t show restraint and responsibility, they will have no one to blame but themselves for punitive regulation and heavy taxes in the future,” the spokesman said.
He added: “Calling a round-table discussion at City Hall is not the only possibility – if Boris needs to go and see the banks personally or appoint an intermediary instead, he will do that. But he is slightly frustrated that having tried to stick up for them, they are still proceeding as if it is business as usual.”