Britain has challenged the EU rule which says that bankers may not receive a bonus in excess of 100% of their salary. It has lost the first round but the legal process is not over. The government’s argument is the familiar one that if it has to apply this rule all the bankers will leave Europe and especially Britain, where London is the number one den for bankers in the world.
This is where our economy is so badly adrift and why the economic cake is now so biased towards the top that eventually if it is unchecked, it will lead to social upheaval and economic collapse. This is not a matter of opinion; it is a mathematical certainty. Therefore a measure to drive the bankers from our shores is a good, not a bad, thing.
Of course it would require the government of the day to set up an economy based upon productive manufacturing to feed consumer demand, affordable housing and energy and a reliance on investment rather than borrowing. Unfortunately such a remodelling is way beyond the capacity of either the current generation of politicians or Whitehall’s mandarins.