Richard Northedge

‘Bank of England denies NatWest rescue move,’ screamed an Evening Standard headline in December 1974 as the credit squeeze strangled the clearer most exposed to the secondary banks that were falling like dominos. This month the Bank has been denying it has just rescued Barclays: the £1.6 billion lent at short notice was not an emergency loan, it insists, simply the use of a strategic safety valve. Just as well, because it is no longer the Bank of England’s job to go round rescuing banks that run out of money. When Gordon Brown put the Bank in charge of setting interest rates a decade ago he took away its role as the supervisor of the banking system.

The company Gordon Brown will be watching most closely as Prime Minister is the polling company most closely watching him. YouGov named Harriet Harman as the deputy best able to help him win the next general election, for example; until that day comes, it will constantly measure Brown’s popular support. YouGov’s polls did not trouble Tony Blair when he moved into No. 10 because the company did not exist. It is a product of internet technology, founded just as the dotcom bubble burst in 2000. But it is still here, and for all the headlines generated by its political polls, they now provide less than 5 per cent of its profits: this Aim-quoted company makes its real money servicing conventional business.

French democracy is in full swing, but the spirit of Revolution is alive and well sous la Manche. Eurotunnel’s small shareholders, having seized control of the company, are prepared to go down — and determined to go down fighting. Their weapon is the private investors’ right to be irrational, voting on prejudice and putting the questions at shareholders’ meetings that pension funds are too polite to utter. In other companies, their holdings add up to little, leaving sober institutions to impose reason — but at Eurotunnel the big funds sold out long ago to cut their losses. The small fry are in charge. Mostly French, they own 94 per cent of the shares and are fighting a debt-for-equity swap that would hand their company to the banks.

Before every Budget, for as long as memories extend, stock-brokers and fund managers have written to the Chancellor telling him that unless stamp duty on share purchases is abolished, the Square Mile will shrivel to nothing. Nowadays, the pre-Budget report gives lobbyists a second annual opportunity to make these special pleadings, while word-processors have made it easier to regurgitate the submissions. But with the same regularity that the City dispatches them, chancellors routinely reject them. The arguments have changed over time, from a straightforward appeal about boosting City business, through claims that the tax would inhibit Britain’s euro entry, to suggestions that abolition might solve the pension crisis. The phrase ‘level playing field’ is much used.

If you remember 1987 at all, it is probably for the October hurricane and the stock market crash. Because they coincided, they are inextricably linked as though one caused the other. In fact, despite falling 23 per cent, the market was back on its feet before the debris of the storm had been cleared. Share prices ended 1987 higher than they began, making the crash a downward blip on a rising graph — unlike the turn-of-the-21st-century meltdown that has left prices well below their dotcom levels after six years. As the 20th anniversary of 1987 looms, rather than remember the October storms we should look back to the preceding months of market madness — and the subsequent era of corporate disasters.

The latest non-job in Britain’s town halls is the affordable housing officer The latest non-job in Britain’s town halls is the affordable housing officer, a bureaucrat with the brief of bringing down the price of property. What local and central government mean by ‘affordable housing’ is, of course, housing that is more affordable, but the fact is that all housing is affordable, otherwise it would not sell or let. Not all housing is affordable to everyone, however — but then it never was. Affordable housing (lack of) is nevertheless one of the causes of the day for the something-must-be-down-about-it campaigners. There is a National Affordable Housing Programme.

More interesting than the Governor of the Bank of England’s letter to the Chancellor explaining why inflation has exceeded the official target will be Gordon Brown’s reply. Mervyn King has admitted there is an even chance he will have to write the letter, and a prudent Governor would already be drafting it. King might want to point out that although inflation is his responsibility — under the pact imposed on the Bank when Labour took office — it is nevertheless Brown who is responsible for some of the steepest price rises.