27/09/2013 00:00
TW
0

by RAY FLEMING
SO, now that we've heard at first hand from the Bank of England's Governor, Mervyn King, are we any the wiser about who was really to blame for the Northern Rock debacle? Mr King's main defence of his initial lack of action last week was that recent legislation had prevented him from mounting a covert deal to bail out the bank without informing the public. “That would have been my preferred course” he told the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee yesterday. Whether that is how the Bank of England should want to act is an interesting question.

A Times/Populus opinion poll taken last Monday, just as the government announced its guarantee to Northern Rock investors, put the blame mainly on problems in the American mortgage market (42%), the management of Northern Rock (29%), the government (20%), the Bank of England the City (15%) and other banks and financial institutions (10%). The poll also returned to the question of who is most trusted by the public to deal with economic problems. Last week, before the Northern Rock crisis had developed, Brown/Darling were preferred to Cameron/Osborne by 61 to 27 per cent; this week the figures were 56 to 18 per cent in the Labour's team's favour - suggesting that the worse a financial scare becomes the more the electorate will turn to the safe pair of hands that Labour is seen to be. An election anouncement next week?