Smoke and mirrors.

This morning, in the words of The Evening Standard, ‘George Osborne tightens squeeze on banks with £800m raid on profits’. In reality he’s doing no such thing. As Robert Peston explained on the Today programme, £800 million is dwarfed by the sum the banks are paying out this year in bonuses: around five thousand million.

  Unfortunately, Peston didn’t raise the issue of a very different  tax change revealed by George Monbiot in today’s Guardian. This abolishes taxation on earnings from a bank’s overseas branches whilst at the same time allowing  it to claim the expense of funding its foreign branches against tax it pays in the UK.  Far from causing the banks pain, the Posh-Boys’ squeeze resembles one given by an aged roué to his mistress’s thigh as he empties his wallet into her lap.

  But it will no doubt convince the readers of the Daily Mail that tough action is being taken. In Monbiot’s words: 

    ‘… this government … has learned the lesson that  

   Thatcher never grasped. If you want to turn this country 

   into another Mexico, where the ruling elite wallows in 

   unimaginable, state-facilitated wealth while the rest can go

   to hell, you don't declare war on society, you don't 

   lambast single mothers or refuse to apologise for Bloody 

  Sunday. You assuage, reassure, conciliate, emote. Then 

   you shaft us.’