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Bob Diamond: Another scalp for the Miliband mantelpiece

July 3, 2012 9:27 am

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Mark Ferguson

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It was as inevitable as night following day. No-one can swim against such a relentless media tide forever, and this morning Bob Diamond surrendered to the mass of people calling for him to go.

And at the head of that mass was Ed Miliband.

I wrote yesterday about Diamond calling Ed last week – effectively begging for his job – but it was to no avail. Miliband had been, on this occasion, swift and decisive. The LIBOR scandal was huge. Diamond must go. And now, in no small part thanks to Ed Miliband, he has.

Another scalp for the mantelpiece. He’ll look great alongside Rebekah Brooks.

In some ways though Diamond’s early morning resignation may be bad for Miliband. It threatens to stop in its tracks the momentum I spoke of yesterday that his team are seeking to build. It will inevitably mean a rewrite of PMQs questions for tomorrow – now that “Will you join me in calling for Diamond to go?” is off the table. A win it certainly is, but it may make it harder for him to use the personal (Diamond) to push the political (a full, independent enquiry). And whatever any individual banker might have done, it’s the political change not the personal retribution that counts.

Still, there are questions Miliband can ask – like why did Marcus Agius resign yesterday only to be made full-time chairman today following Diamond’s demise. Is he still “truly sorry”? But the mileage for Miliband is no longer found at Barclays. He’d be better served by asking which other banks are similarly guilty. And if the government “knows what happened” over LIBOR – does that apply to the unknown misdeeds of other banks to?

A full enquiry isn’t off the agenda, not yet. Not with events moving at a pace like this. And securing a government u-turn on that should still be the prize Labour are aiming for.

http://twitter.com/KulganofCrydee Kulgan of Crydee

“He’d be better served by asking which other banks are similarly guilty. And if the government “knows what happened” over LIBOR – does that apply to the unknown misdeeds of other banks to?”
He also needs to ask those questions of himself & his party.

Labour missed a trick here. What they should of done is said ‘Sorry, some of this happened under our watch now let all parties work together to sort this out’. I would have some respect if they had said this but they have gone down the usual hypocritical denial route.

This issue is down to all parties. All parties bear responsibility. Stop the hypocrisy and blame game. Work together and sort it.
- Cari_esky
  
  For the past two years the Conservative Party has been been saying about the mess we inherited. When ever they get stuck to answer questions they resort to say the mess we inherited. Everything that has gone wrong with the economy is because of the mess Labour caused according to the Tories. Instead of them getting down to the job they wanted and need to do. The Tories know what the real cause of the crises is and it’s the banks. The Tories do not want to know or hear what Labour has to offer to try and sort the economy out.
  For this Libor scandalI think Labour has every right to try and get the upper hand here if Cameron is differing on the issue. We all know the baking people bank roll the Tory Party.
  This is politics and opportunities need to be taken in an intelligent way, which I feel Miliband is doing.
  - http://twitter.com/KulganofCrydee Kulgan of Crydee
    
    The economy is a totally separate issue. The issue being discussed is the LIBOR scandal. Don’t try & confuse the two issues. Hypocrisy is not an intelligent thing!
    - treborc
      
      Hypocrisy, well labour are saying they knew nothing of this at all, so how the hell can the Tories who have been in power for two years know anything.
      
      The big question of course is why all Government including those in Opposition allowed this to happen, why did the FSA not see something and why the hell is this not a criminal offence.
    - Cari_esky
      
      I’m not confusing the two. I am highlighting the politics.
      So when the Tories were banging on about even less regulation yet now say the banking sector wasn’t regulated enough, isn’t that hypocrisy?
      Isn’t it correct in saying we have been living in a time when it became the consensus that regulation is a barrier to the market and that the market will organise and correct itself and that shareholders will look after their company, not regulation or the governments?
      - Dave Postles
        
        The name that dare not speak itself: Alan Greenspan – closely followed by another Alan (Walters).
      - treborc
        
        Just heard Bob Diamond will get severance pay which could be into the thirty million mark.
        
        Ah unemployment, and poverty
  - Just_Another_Voter
    
    You do realise that this happened while Labour were in power and Ed Balls was the city minister and Ed Miliband was in Brown’s bunker?
    Speaking of Ed Balls, where is he? He keeps sending out Chris Leslie to speak for him.
    - Cari_esky
      
      We don’t know how long this has really been going on for.
      Who was calling for less regulation than there already was?
      - treborc
        
        They stated now Six years…..
      - Winston_from_the_Ministry
        
        It doesn’t matter how much regulation you have if it’s not properly applied.
      - treborc
        
        http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304708604577503041110363000.html
        
        This is interesting as the people have decided to start legal proceeding to reclaim money, wait until it happens here, the fact is this may end up being another massive crises in banking needing more and more Bail outs.
John Dore

“And at the head of that mass was Ed Miliband.”
Mark, when you want to take people on a journey try to keep it real.
Just_Another_Voter

I’m sorry but this is pure fiction.
On Sunday Rachel Reeves was asked multiple times by Andrew Neil is Diamond should resign and she refused to answer each time. I presume she speaks for her leader?
- Daniel Speight
  
  This was from Monday’s Guardian.
  
  Ed Miliband has called on the Barclays chief, Bob Diamond, to quit after the interest rate rigging scandal, and says he intends to force a vote to secure an independent investigation into banking similar to the Leveson inquiry.
  
  Good enough?
  - treborc
    
    I see no relevance for god sake, my wife shouted he should resign perhaps she needs to be a Minister.
    
    It’s a dam pity some of these leaders did not scream he should go when these people were stealing the bonus payments they had, because a hell of a lot of people including me asked how they hell have these people been paid so much what have they done, what was it for.
    
    Why did nobody know about this, why are politicians so out of touch, we are hearing now ten more banks are going to come out and plead guilty, this is massive, and nobody saw it, nobody knew, I do not believe it.
    
    band wagon again.
    - Cari_esky
      
      You forget that we are really ruled by the banks and we the voters wanted less regulation, more freedom, more credit and we voted for parties that allowed these. Thatcher was voted in because the majority saw the pre war settlement as out of date and wanted what Thatcher could give that is why Labour had to adopt and except the Thatcher settlement because that is what most people wanted.
      - treborc
        
        We did not have any say in the regulations did Brown ask you about it. Thatcher won elections because (1) the Falkland (2) Labour was in a mess after losing an election they knew they would have won (3) Kinnock was unelectable to the public because he had a big mouth.
        
        It’s fine that Miliband is calling for an inquiry, and as he said this morning if Labour is guilty of light touch regulation then we will put it right, problem is of course he should have been shouting this when he was a Minister, the one thing I remember about Miliband time in labour was he said little.
      - Amber Star
        
        Sad but true, Cari_esky.
      - postageincluded
        
        Amber, I hate to say it, but you’re wrong.
      - Daniel Speight
        
        …that is why Labour had to adopt and except the Thatcher settlement because that is what most people wanted.
        
        No, Labour didn’t have to do anything. They could have still taken the moral high road. A choice was made by the then leadership. Nobody put a gun to their heads.
      - postageincluded
        
        The majority voted against Thatcher in every one of the elections she won, and a lot of her own voters (and not a few of her MPs) couldn’t stand her or her politics either.
        
        As for the majority thinking that the “post-war settlement was out of date”, well that’s just pure Thatcherite mythology – only a tiny minority of politicos think in such terms, the electorate don’t.
        
        Thatcher won elections because we have a first-past-the-post system and the opposition to her wasn’t united. Thats why Blair won three elections too. Political gobbledygook had very little to do with it.
  - Hugh
    
    And this from Sunday’s news: “Four out of five people want individuals to be prosecuted when banks break the law, according to a new survey.”
    
    Truly another “high risk manouvre” from Ed. So far, it’s bankers and the tabloids Ed has bravely come out against. Next week: Miliband bravely calls for break up of the evil Empire – Emperor Palpatine a ‘dark force’ in intergalactic relations, says the Labour leader.
Dave Postles

What’s the real back story?
- treborc
  
  Fraud, Fraud, and Fraud, Politicians who did not want to know because it was working for them.
  
  Miliband is now saying yes we need an inquiry which politicians love to have, he says could show the Government were wrong with light touch regulations, then he said but Cameron’s lot are the same, like watching a bunch of kids playing that’s my toy.
  
  Shambles and what does labour come up with, ah yes lets spend a few more million on an inquiry which will say yes it’s fraud, but of course it’s civil not criminal change it.
Winston_from_the_Ministry

Reminds me of those John Terry photoshops.
- Dave Postles
  
  That’s another example of a proprietary brand becoming an exclusionary noun and verb. GIMP – libre et gratuit. PowerPoint is just one example of a presentation package. LibreOffice (including presentation package) – libre et gratuit.
  - Winston_from_the_Ministry
    
    It is indeed.
    
    Like most people, I usually find a way to get a not so old version of photoshop for free though . I did give GIMP a go, but I found it slow and unituitive.
    
    I am however, a massive advocate of OpenOffice.
    - treborc
      
      A lot of people use open Office now as most new Computers do not come with anything these days they stopped works a few years ago.,
      - Winston_from_the_Ministry
        
        Either that or force you into buying a whole load of crap you don’t need.
      - treborc
        
        I’ve got two free word processors both are able to read from my speech writer, so no need to spent to much on office.
Phil Boston

Well Ed left it as late as he could as with the News International thing. Only when it was clear that the writing was on the wall and illegal acts had been committed did he finally act or face accusations of collusion. The New Labour enablers who told the bankers to `get rich and pay their taxes’ have got more front than Brighton.
- Peter Barnard
  
  Indeed, Phil B.
  
  Tom Watson and Chris Bryant were ploughing very lonely furrows until the Milly Dowler phone-hacking story broke.
Steven T Green

In one sense I agree with all this – but it reads as though the main focus is tactical in terms of party advantage. Don’t get me wrong – I like party advantage but I also scent an opportunity to make major inroads into the power of capital and the banks in society. Ed M has the chance to drive that AND take the country with him. There aren’t many opportunities like that in Britain.
Nlc Ltd Land

An understanding of who borrowed funds based upon a Libor bottom line would be worth airing. Housing Adams providing homeless people accommodation for a starter!
Chief Geronimo Apache

Oh, come on now. Isn’t it just a little too rich to claim that indecisive, dilatory, policy-lite, lost and drowning Ed Miliband is responsible in more than a minor way for Bob Diamond’s departure from Barclays.

White man speak with forked tongue.
Dave Postles

… and now GSK fined for manipulating information about its anti-depressant drug – another case which has taken almost ten years to prove. Truly a disgrace – playing with people’s lives.
- treborc
  
  Profits have always been the same, I had an operation on my back to place a Pump under my skin which delivers a dose of Morphine into my spinal cord, what the consultant forgot to tell me he was being paid thousands of pounds to use me as a test case. It was only four years ago I was told the pump had failed to deliver the results , I ended up with MRSA of the spine due to this operation.
  
  Everyone in the last few years have abused their position for profit from MP’s to bankers to bloody doctors.
  - Dave Postles
    
    Ghastly, treborc.
  - Daniel Speight
    
    It’s all about greed isn’t it? Labour is meant to be above this. We should have a morality that is above that of the spivs in the Tories. Where did we lose that?
    - treborc
      
      Well we lost it because of new labour and Blair, it’s the same reason why I do not trust Progress, these people decided we needed another dam new labour Tory Thatcherite party.
      
      Ball’s on TV now you cannot blame me I was not in the treasury.
      
      Now we will see people cutting each others throats….
Peter Barnard

This is not a good article, Mark. It may be good political theatre for Labourites in Westminster, in the Labour Party new premises, and for the spads and other gossipers, but for the men/women on the top of the Clapham omnibus with real lives to lead, it will leave them distinctly unimpressed.

As Treborc remarks more than once, Labour was in charge while this was happening and the FSA report notes the first instance of LIBOR manipulation as early as 2005. I think that it’s safe to say that there would have been instances before then. In addition, there were press reports that something wasn’t quite right about LIBOR.

Not only that, Gordon Brown as Chancellor in his Mansion House speech in 2006 told the assembled City folk what a splendid job they were doing and what splendid chaps they were, when it was plain to the rest of us that the culture in the City of London – based on personal and corporate profit as the only motives – was pretty rotten. I felt sickened by this speech ; it was the kind of speech that a Labour Chancellor should not be making in a million years.

This is not over by a long chalk. There are reports of conversations, perhaps of a material nature, between Barclays, the FSA and the BoE. I will not be surprised in the least to see more than one instance of convenient amnesia as witnesses are asked to give their recollections of what was said when, and to whom.
- treborc
  
  Lets see what happens when people start to ask what compensation can they expect, and how much more money will the government pump into these banks, somebody has to ask are these banks worth keeping, these are not the parts we need investment banking can be closed.
  - Peter Barnard
    
    Indeed, Treborc, but don’t hold your breath for answers to your questions.
    
    As far as the compensation goes, I doubt that it will be easy to dismiss many people “for cause” and the compensation levels will be high.
    - treborc
      
      yes and who will pay for it, more welfare cuts
Amber Star

It was either Bob Diamond or Tucker & King (Bank of England) who had to go.

But this doesn’t let the BoE off the hook, I still want to know: Did Diamond have a conversation with Tucker about the rate fixing (e.g. Several banks are submitting wrong data) & did the BoE subsequently tell Alistair Darling?
Amber Star

As I mentioned in previous comments, the Bank of England is up to its neck in this. They are also saying the last Labour government is too – but at the moment that is merely an assertion.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jul/03/bob-diamond-quits-barclays

Here’s the e-mail from *Robert E Diamond to Barclays executives, following his conversation with Tucker of the BoE.

“Further to our last call, Mr Tucker reiterated that he had received calls from a number of senior figures within Whitehall to question why Barclays was always toward the top end of the Libor pricing. His response was “you have to pay what you have to pay”. I asked if he could relay the reality, that not all banks were providing quotes at the levels that represented real transactions, his response “oh, that would be worse”.I explained again our market rate driven policy and that it had recently meant that we appeared in the top quartile and on occasion the top decile of the pricing. Equally I noted that we continued to see others in the market posting rates at levels that were not representative of where they would actually undertake business. This latter point has on occasion pushed us higher than would otherwise appear to be the case. In fact, we are not having to “pay up” for money at all.Mr Tucker stated the levels of calls he was receiving from Whitehall were ‘senior’ and that while he was certain we did not need advice, that it did not always need to be the case that we appeared as high as we have recently.”
RED*Now, what’s interesting to me is that the Guardian et al are saying this is bad for Labour. I don’t ‘get’ that at all. When Bob Diamond asks Tucker to tell the Labour government that not all banks are submitting proper rates, Tucker replies: “oh, that would be worse”. This suggests to me, that Tucker – i.e. the BoE – did NOT tell the Labour government about Diamond’s allegations that ‘dodgy rate submitting’ was widespread.So, at the moment, I fail to see how this reflects badly on Labour – but we’ll need to wait to see what happens next.
- aracataca
  
  Quite right Amber and well spotted.
aracataca

Diamond has gone to prevent the judicial enquiry. This would have had a serious knock-on effect on the operations of international corporate finance and that of course cannot be allowed. Modern capitalism has an enormous capacity to incorporate (and often commodify) a huge range of social movements. This perhaps explains why so many of the battles around ‘identity politics’ so prevalent in the 1960s and 1970s have been won. Attempts to damage and attack profitability are treated in a wholly different way. Damaging ‘the bottom line’ (so to speak) is beyond the pale. It cannot be allowed to succeed and I’ll make a bet with anyone that the judicial enquiry will not be allowed to go ahead.
John Dore

This is going to become a huge scandal. Ed Balls has distanced himself pointing out he was children’s secretary at the time.

Not sure what Miliband is hoping to achieve by blowing this up. What we need to be sure of is that our Goose is ugly, there is not doubt about that. However the Goose pays for schools and hospitals, pensions and more. Cooking it will not do anyone any favours. We need to reform it.New Labour got elected being friends of business and the media. I’m getting worried that Miliband is far from building relationships, he’s creating enemies that will fry him. I spoke to a friend who works in the city and unprompted he said WTF is he doing, we were doing as we were told and now he’s out to fry us.

These are troublesome waters, mark my words.
Just_Another_Voter

With the speed that this story is progressing Miliband could add Ed Balls’ head to his collection.
As somebody tweeted earlier “Libor could be the 1st scandal that brings down the Opposition”
- John Dore
  
  Well the blame game has shifted from the Banks to Paul Tucker, the correspondence suggests that PT stated the pressure came from Whitehall and was senior. Lets see if he keeps quiet or spills the beans. The economic brains in Whitehall outside of the mandarins was Shriti V and Ed B.
  
  Whatever happened if confidence is damaged we are knackered.
- Dave Postles
  
  So you say. Meanwhile, the FERC is investigating Barclays (BarCap) for rigging the electricity supply in California.
John Dore

Shriti V has just issued a denial to say – no recollection of any conversations.
uxx

connections with ‘prudence brown’s chancellorship ?
ed balls and ed millibrand were his 2 main allies.
a full public enquiry could be very interesting ?
- Dave Postles
  
  * Barclays apparently has a track record of poor decisions – including breaking US sanctions for which it was fined in 2010 by disguising records of transactions in its base at Poole.
  * Mynors and Diamond have both reported that they warned the executive of the BBA about some banks abusing Libor rates, but the BBA ignored the warnings.
  You would have had to micro-manage the banks in a more detailed way than auditors to uncover all this abuse.
  - treborc
    
    The most recent addition to UK unemployment figures, former Barclays chief Bob Diamond, has chickened out of hosting a London fundraiser for Mitt Romney — with tickets costing up to $75,000 per head.
    
    Diamond pulled out of the London event last night, several hours before quitting as boss of Barclays. Romney himself is thought to be gracing the bash with his presence, which is scheduled to coincide with the Olympics opening ceremony.
    
    See look what you have all done.
    
    http://politicalscrapbook.net/
Pingback: Is Ed Miliband becoming ruthlessly political? » 21stCenturyFix.org.uk

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