Robert Peston, for it is he, seems to be perfectly happy to propogate this myth. On today's Six O'Clock news he was saying that the merger between HBOS and Lloyds was really nothing to do with Gordon Brown. Which is strange, because on the BBC website he said this on 17th September last year.
Our business editor said there was a real concern that any run on HBOS shares would create enough fear among the bank's financiers - providers of wholesale credit who give the bank its money - for there to be a withdrawal of credit for HBOS. "Clearly the watchdog and Treasury will welcome a deal as it will put the bank on a sounder footing," he said. "The last thing they want is a fully fledged crisis." He added that the deal was negotiated at a very high level, with Prime Minister Gordon Brown telling Lloyds TSB chairman Sir Victor Blank that it would helpful if Lloyds could end the uncertainty surrounding HBOS by buying it.
So, clearly, the whole thing had Gordon Brown's fingerprints all over it, yet Peston is now promulgating a myth that he didn't. Perhaps Mr Peston would like to clear up this apparent inconsistency.
39 comments:
Mr Peston would seem to be cursed with the Gordon Brown "Vision Thing".
In which you look over your shoulder and see whatever you wish had been there.
In a year's time, all the banks will be in public ownership.
Don't forget Nick Robinson when he "defended" Ed Balls when he wrote... "In other words,they accept that he said what's being quoted but had not meant to say it."
The problem with Peston is that, while he is undoubtedly a great journalist with superb sources, he cannot communicate information in a clear, simple or consistent way. I'm not so sure this example constitutes "spinning", as I'm not sure Nick Robinson's quote up there deserved the mauling it received earlier last week.
Move along now. Nothing to see here. Just some rewriting of history. Records of the past will be made consistent in due course.
Erm...
"
Common Purpose has a number of vacancies around the UK
“Common Purpose has for years done brilliant work in forging valuable links between the private, public and voluntary sectors. And it has helped to make better citizens of individuals and institutions.”
Robert Peston, BBC Business Editor"
He works for the BBC, the 'impartial' state broadcaster- next question
Robert Peston could well be mistaken for a Labour spin doctor this evening.
His strongly biased broadcast suggesting the PM played no part in the Lloyds/HBOS tie-up and firmly laying the blame with Eric Daniels is suspect.
No mention of the Brown/Blank relationship only made it worse.
Peston merely doing his masters bidding (BBC)...so he is the one ending up having his Sept 08 comments rammed up his jacksie and looking like a complete tit........but so much better than Broon suffering said fate.....
OH yes and Peston gets to keep his gold plated job...Make sure your BBC tv licence is up to date peeps..
Weasel
Not just the banks
Anything the State can own, it will own.
We have a new Erich Honecker. Watch
Iain
This eveing's interview with Peston is here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7888977.stm
Of course Pesto omits to remind us that if Lloyds made an error when they merged with HBOS, the government must have made the same error when they contributed 40% of the current equity in Lloyds.
Lloyds has a bit of an excuse because as HBOS was a competiror prior to the merger, so a lot of the information on the comapny would have been kept from them prior to diclosure.
The government has no such excuse because somebody under the tripartite regulatory regime was supposed to regulate HBOS.
Careful Iain. A spat with Draper is one thing. A spat with Peston is quite another.
Although the talks of a merger had been ongoing for some time before it was leaked, it was Brown meeting Victor Blank-for-security-reasons at a cocktail party, and giving his assurance that it would be allowed, that got the deal done.
No matter how much Lloyds and HBOS wanted to merge they could not have done so without the competition rules being bent.(And, let's not forget, the rights issues being underwritten.)
If he does, Lord help me in receipt of his all so variable velocity delivery. This man's brain power is better delivered in print and not in person.
No one on the trading floor at the worlds local bank would welcome Pesto. Pesto Piss Off is the message from canary wharf. Not because he's left wing but because he's unaware of his own weakness at being manipulated, and in my neck of the woods being easily manipulated makes you a waste of space at best, at worst a liability. So PissOffPesto go cover fetes in the local press.
Its easy.
Labour is supported by the BBC.
Peston works for the BBC
Its all the same
I stopped reading Peston last year when I found out how he was obtaining some of his "scoops". Although he works for the Beeb and can therefore be relied upon to lean leftwards, what I was told by a reliable source removed any thought that he might be independent of the Government
As Old Holburn says, "Common Purpose".
I have not been able to figure out why Mr Peston has not been hauled before the relevant authorities for manipulating share prices in the banks in the autumn of last year.
I am convinced he worked in tandem with certain sources in the government to reduce the value of shares in the period leading up to the government's purchases of shares in high street banks. If he was not culpable, then he is at least guilty of being totally manipulated.
I am also yet again surprised by the lack of teeth in the mainstream media who have never sought to highlight the convenience of Mr Peston's revelations for the government, and the implications that has for the BBC as an 'independent (sic) broadcaster'.
Does the BBC not realise that Labour will not be in charge for ever, and that if it continues to show its current level of bias it may be committing a long suicide on screen and radio with every passing day.
Very good question, Iain.
There is lots of nastiness about this
http://www.mergeractiongroup.org.uk/
is a good resource of course.
OH's Honecker theory is very hard to dismiss.
Anyone else notice Lord Burn's explosive testimony to a Houseof Lords committee?
http://therantingkingpenguin.blogspot.com/2009/02/you-cant-spin-this-gordon-it-is-your.html
Reported in the Grauniad of all places!
The Penguin
We all know about the BBC so this is not at all surprising.
I'm sure everyone would like to know what Dave would do about them if he were in government?
"Why Is Robert Peston Spinning for Downing Street?"
Something to do with his upbringing?
Perhaps there is a simple explanation - Pesto just wants to join the HoL with his Dad.
To me, this episode has very much of the decline of Rome about it. The Common Purpose conspiracy theory essentially agrees as what they argue is that Europe is trying to replace elected parliaments with low grade administrators, which is exactly the Roman model of government. Alas, we know how that ended: Roman provinces were eventually overrun (by Arabs in North Africa and by immigration in norther Europe) because Rome had sucked them dry of both cash and talent. Then Rome itself ran out of money. His bureaucracy struggled on for a long while, living off accumulated capital, refusing the change its model as the whole of the former Roman Empire endured a recession lasting 900 years. (Like today, most people thought the recession would last 6-18 months and so continued to support the assumptions of the Roman government.)
I'm not sure it is a conspiracy or just laziness though. Did the bureaucrats who surrendered Carthage to Rome, for example, really conspire to get their civilisation erased, but not before they themselves were slaughtered by an angry populace, or were they just indolent, cowardly and stupid? Did they really just rely on good people doing nothing and, as in Europe today, being 'disengaged from politics'?
Thank you Iain. Excellent post. I listened to this Petson interview. When he forthrightly said that Brown had no involvement in the takeover and also seemed to be calling for the resignation of the head of Lloyds (not quite but almost in my view) I thought I had misunderstood what happaned last year based on reprots I read at the time.
Leaving Peston and the BBC aside for a moment - lets go back to the origional decision.
just what were the Lloyds board thinking abouyt?
What were Lloyds shareholders thinking about.
The warning signs were clearly there - I am not the sharpest knife in the box but I remember writing comments on various blogs pointing out the dangers of buying a pig in a poke.
I believe the terms were indeed changed during the negotiations - much to the disgust of HBOS - but even then it seemed a crazy deal.
Despite the BBC efforts though - I think the truth is seeping into the national psyche now - "Gordon is an idiot"
"A Public Scandal" The Times leader.
Eloquence and accuracy commenting on the Lloyds/HBOS merger. It also fills in the holes Peston would prefer to remain muddied.
Brown "grandiloquent and out of touch".
Yes, a political con-man.
Robert Peston and the BBC are just mouthpieces for Nu Liebour.
We see this day in and day out with Peston and Nick Robinson re-writing history to make it look as if Gordon Brown has had nothing to do with things when they go wrong.
This morning "Darling defends bailout of HBOS", shouts the BBC front page headline.
How so?
Well "Mr Darling told the BBC's Newsnight the government had to intervene quickly to stop the banking system's collapse."
for good measure he adds...
"We didn't have months or weeks to look at it, we had to intervene quickly and that is what we did,"
Let us not forget that Northern Rock was bailed out by the Government 12 months earlier, and there had been rumours of problems with the various banks balance sheets for months.
Darling may have needed to make the final decision to act quickly, but he had months to investigate the state of each bank, and the possible need for support.
HBOS should have come as no surprise to him, or the FSA. The fact that it did, despite their having been a credit crunch for well over a year, demonstrates how incompetent the FSA and the Treasury were at monitoring the situation.
Had the dire situation been known about, perhaps Gordon Brown would not have been asking Lloyds to bail them out, recognising that it might bring Lloyds down too.
Gordon Brown is still being let off the hook for the "Light Touch" regulation that he championed. He even had the cheek. at PMQ's, to claim that while he had been looking to strengthen regulation, Cameron was calling for lighter regulation.
Let us take a moment to consider this.
Hansard 11 Feb 2009 : Column 1363
At PMQ's Gordon Brown claimed...
"What did the Leader of the Opposition say to the Conservative party conference? He said:
“Everyone knows that business need deregulation... Who’s standing in the way? The great regulator... Gordon Brown.”
He went on to say we had to deregulate the wealth creators. At this point, when the right hon. Gentleman is calling for more regulation, perhaps he would be honest enough to admit that he has been calling for the last few years for total deregulation of many of the businesses in this country."
However looking at the speech in question to Conference, in 2005, what Cameron actually said was...
"Everyone knows that business need deregulation to compete with China and India. Who is standing in the way? The great regulator and controller, Gordon Brown."
Clearly Cameron was not talking about the banks but about manufacturing industry. Gordon Brown tries to conflate what was a perfectly reasonable argument, with a suggestion that it was a call to deregulate the banks - whilst simultaneously suggesting that he himself was the "Great Regulator" of the banks.
However Gordon Browns record on deregulation of the banks is summed up in the Treasury Press release 50/05 titled "Chancellor launches Better Regulation Action Plan"
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/better_regulation_action_plan.htm
The press release is about "Light Touch" regulation in general - but, having first identified
"A risk based approach helps move us a million miles away from the old assumption - the assumption since the first legislation of Victorian times - that business, unregulated, will invariably act irresponsibly."
It goes on to make special mention of Gordon Browns FSA, leading the world...
"We will look to apply on a wider basis the principle of risk based regulation to financial services legislation and the work of the FSA. The FSA, which we set up in 1997 as a world leading example of how to regulate financial services, was itself a merger of nine regulators into one.
It has already done valuable work on adopting a risk based approach and I welcome the thinking it is doing about how it can further reduce the burden of financial regulation."
It is Gordon Brown himself that pushed for light touch regulation of the banks through the FSA.
Regulation of the banks by the FSA has failed, because it was not tough enough.
Gordon Brown is to blame. This Press release clearly demonstrates the fact that Gordon Brown was pushing for deregulation of the banks by the FSA. That he felt businesses would not act irresponsibly - a direct contrast to his claims now that they have.
I have raised this press release several times on this site and others - why are the Conservatives not making more of it?
Obviously Gordon welcomed it. But the bank(s) chose to do it because they believed it was the right thing for their shareholders. peston knows that and that's what he said. of course Gordon welcomed it. One part of the mix having a go at healing itself.
Peston is I'd say Labour through and through and Robinson is Tory ditto. But both of them make a good fist of fair and balanced coverage.
The government press people obviously try and brief and cajole all relevant journalists, as do the oppositions' operations.
Peston personifies the BBC's complete left-wing bias - they are nothing more than Brown's spokesmen. Think back to Marr leaving Downing Street as if he was a press officer to relay to the world Brown's view on his botched General Election decision. And it is illegal not to pay for this?
"Perhaps Mr Peston would like to clear up this apparent inconsistency."
No chance.
Peston relies on short memories.
There's a lot more to this story if you stop and think about it.
This from my blog:
Pesto omits to remind us that if Lloyds made a mistake when they merged with HBOS, the government must have made the same error when they put in 40% of the current equity into Lloyds.
Lloyds has an excuse because HBOS was a competiror prior to the merger. The government / Treasury / BoE / FSA has no such excuse because the FSA was supposed to regulate HBOS.
At this point, we realise that Pesto's analysis falls apart. After all, when Eric Daniels and the Lloyds board told the government and the FSA that they really didn't want to go througfh with the deal, the government put extra money into HBOS, which is why the tax payer now owns 40% of the merged group.
Far from distancing himself from the merger, it was Brown who pushed it through by ponying up several billion of tax payers cash to push the deal through. Having agreed to pump billions into HBOS Brown wanted it to go to a bank that could manage the assets properly.
Unfortunately, Brown and Darling appear to have forgotten to ask HBOS how many dubious assets they had before they pumped in any money. Assets don't go bad overnight, particularly not commercial proprty backed assets, so the £10 billion of assets that were written off in February 2009 must have looked pretty shaky in September 2008. Some more questions for Mr Brown and Mr Darling.
Silly me, I thought Robert Peston was employed by the Brown/nulabour press office and his boss was that bloke wassisname...er.. Robinson yeah thats it.
They certainly act as though they are Browns salaried bitches, everytime I see them they fall over themselves to 'be fair to Brown' in fact its their catchphrase now I believe.
Brown to blame for anything? naaaah couldnt be could it, I mean to be fair blah blah ZZZzzzzzz.
Perhaps more important that (possibly) Robert Peston besome the mouthpiece of downing street, is Gordon Brown's role in this.
Concerns were expressed about his suitability to be Prime Minister as he seemed to duck responsibility when things went wrong. I suggest this is what is happening now. Decisions are being made which, whether right or wrong, will have a collosal impact on the future health of the British Economy. They go unrecorded and so no blame can be attatched later. In keeping the decisions unrecorded means that they are also not properly thought through and debated by those at the top of government and their expert advisors.
I lost trust in Mr Peston over Northern Rock and his 'exclusive'! For at least a Month before CNBC Europe had been regularly discussing that N R was failing. When the BBC announced that Robert Peston had breaking news on a British Bank being bailed out, I knew it was Northern Rock!
When he became Business Editor Peston said he would put the case for business, although the economic downturn really makes this hard, I feel he has gone native and now he puts "the man on the street's" opinion.
When Jeff Randal was Business Editor, he kept to his remit and did not really stray into the other editor briefs, increasingly I am unsure if Mr Peston is the Business, Economic or the Political Editor?
It's far more clear-cut than that even:
"The government has also said it will over-rule any concerns that competition authorities may raise, BBC Business Editor Robert Peston has learned.
He added the prime minister was involved in negotiating the deal, which has the blessing of UK authorities"
...from the same BBC link you provide...
word verification "factally"!!! almost perfect.
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