Time for an apology

By David Beeson

What a great asset a short memory can be. To those who want to take advantage of it.

In the run up to the budget, the Tories are going to be relying on our having forgotten a lot. Get set for their increasing clamour for an apology from the government for the economic crisis. They’ll be calling on us to join them in denouncing Ministers for their failure to control the bankers in their bonus-fuelled intoxication.

Just keep pinching yourselves and reminding yourselves that it’s the Tories who’ll be demanding this. The guys who gave us de-mutualisation of the building societies. Who gave us light-touch regulation of the financial sector. Who gave us trickle-down economics.

In other words, who were at the source of it all.

Others, outside the Tory Party, may criticise Labour for not having done enough to rein in the bankers. But the Tories were the ones that gave the bankers their head in the first place.

Time for an apology? Let’s have one from Thatcher, Tebbitt, Lamont and their successors on the present Conservative Front Bench.

Perhaps Ken Clark would like to be the first to express his regrets?