CITY AND SUBURBAN

The people's flag is pink and white, But lo, the Euro-fleet's in sight

CHRISTOPHER FILDES

The prawn cocktail offensive is now a crustacean invasion. After years of soften- ing up the City over its own lunch tables, the New Model Army of Labour has sent in its leader to raise his standard in Guildhall. It is a nice smart new prawn-coloured stan- dard, though the anthem that hails it is an old one:

The people's flag is pink and white Keep Bolshevism out of sight!

Let hammer and let sickle rust: The path of compromise we'll trust.

Beneath it, Tony Blair publicly discarded the obsolete weaponry of past campaigns: the idea of big government commanding the economy, picking winners, making plans, giving orders, conscripting finance and standing no nonsense from markets. Times have changed, he said. So indeed they have, here and in most of the world but not, of course, on the continent of Europe. There we can see big government evolving into big super-government, giving orders, making plans, picking champions and as a matter of principle arrogating money and power to the centre. Its plan- ners know better than the markets, messy, vulgar, individualistic places that they are — home to the Anglo-Saxon conspirators who wrecked Europe's elegant exchange rate mechanism. The planners' first achievement was the Common Agricultural Policy, that lumbering antithesis of a free market. Now they are busily intervening in the labour market, with results that can be seen in Europe's endemic unemployment. Coming shortly, the Common Monetary Policy is to be their masterpiece. We now need to know whether New Labour's stan- dard-bearer likes these ideas any better when they come to us in European wrap- pers. They are the invading force that threatens us. As for the crustaceans, the City can swallow them.

Ready Eddie

ON THE white cliffs of Threadneedle Street, Eddie George is on the alert. The City could flourish, he says, inside the sin- gle currency or out, and is ready for either. So much for scare stories of 20,000 City jobs at risk because the Ins and Outs were arguing. (Ready Eddie has for long sound- ed like an Out to me.) Meanwhile in Dublin, a splendid new weapon was on offer to the finance ministers of Europe when they met for a crack about monetary union. To qualify, their governments must get their deficits down. Yes, but what if, having qualified, they then relapse, like slimmers celebrating their release from a health farm, going out and borrowing as if there were no Monday? Then they must be punished, so the ministers were told. How? Well, they would have to part with money or be made to pay a fine. How would they raise the money to do that? By borrowing some more, of course. This weapon will be recognised in Dublin. It is the Irish sawn- off shotgun with the wrong end sawn off.

Swiss banks evoke.. .

A STRONG catholic response to works of art, said Kenneth Clark, is like a comfort- able balance in a Swiss bank. He knew what he was talking about, having inherited a fortune (spun from C. & J. Clark's thread) before going on to corner civilisation. These were resources, he implied, that nobody could take away from you. That, of course, is why they are resented by those who do not have them, and most of all by governments, which live by taking things away. French governments have always lived like that, which is why Swiss banking grew up in Geneva. It was somewhere handy for the French to keep their money before Louis XIV got hold of it and spent it. Fussy when it comes to enforcing their own laws and rules, the Swiss have never bothered much about enforcing other people's. To the Swiss a good bank, like a good secret service, should be secret and serviceable.

. . . my strong response

SO WHEN oppression and war came to Europe, the Swiss bank vaults were open to its refugees, so long as they could remem- ber their account numbers. If they missed their opportunity, their governments might help themselves to their money. Later they might ship it off to Switzerland under another label, or another number. This now provides a heaven-sent justification to all those who want to get inside those vaults and scan their secrets. Governments have all sorts of reasons for wanting to do that. Gold itself is a challenge to their authority. It is a store of wealth which existed before they did and owes nothing to them. It is the alternative to taking them on trust — even to trusting a New Model Labour govern- ment. Gold in a Swiss vault, a balance in a Swiss bank, an account known only by its number — already I feel a strong catholic response to them.

With love from the Savoy

LET the Savoy Hotel be first to wish us all a happy Christmas. It can look back on a year in which it fmally outlived its most per- sistent suitor, the Forte group, but it was stuck with funeral expenses of £600,000 and is now splashing out on a restorative face- lift. So to help cover its costs it has come up with a nibby line in Christmas gifts. For £4 you can buy a pound of Savoy coffee (£5 if you want the presentation tin) and, for rather more, a Savoy bed. This comes handmade and bespoke from the craftsmen of the Savoy Bedworks. Think of paying anything from £1,415 to more than twice that. I suppose that, after a really gratifying stay at the Savoy, you might want to put the bed on the bill — an apter souvenir than a bathrobe or a tin of coffee.

TV has a DFI

IT had to happen: DFI Television. Now British Telecom wants to join up with it. DFI, so I learn, already has 19 channels and broadcasts to Germany. It must take its name (never mind suggestions that the I is meant to be a numeral) from a term of art used in television, but with wider applica- tions, to explain why it all takes too long and costs too much. In the studio, the cry goes up: `Hold everything — the director has had a DFI.' This stands for Different Fantastic Idea, or for something quite like it. Time in to DFI TV now, unless you change your mind.