CITY AND SUBURBAN
Asparagus, sole, salmon, beef, bombes, wines it's the Lord Mayor's red-tie dinner
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
Red tie in the morning, the City's still yawning, red tie at night, the Lord Mayor takes fright. Gordon Brown wants to come to dinner in his Party clothes. The bankers and merchants who will join him at the Mansion House have taken the election in their stride and watched the markets carry straight on upwards, but uniforms are a language that they understand and speak. (Shoes at Cazenove have laces.) So if Gor- don Brown opts to wear a suit and tie, that must be telling them something, probably unpleasant. It can't just be that Ed and Ed and Charlie, his boy wonders, do not own a dinner jacket between them. This dinner has been a City • fixture for 120 years Lloyd George used it to threaten Germany with war — but more recent chancellors have let the tone down. Kenneth Clarke's predecessor switched the date to Ascot week, forcing City grandees to writhe out of their morning coats into white tie and tails in the backs of their corporate Daim- lers. Last year our Ken turned up in a black tie and said that the economy was not like a pot noodle. (He went on to overheat it.) His fellow guests had already wrapped themselves round the Lord Mayor's aspara- gus, sole, salmon, beef, bombes and wines, and would not have recognised a pot noo- dle if one were served up on their overload- ed plates. We must all tuck in, next month, before the new Chancellor calls for a coffee morning or a War on Want breakfast. It may be that, just as with hunting, his party hates to see the class enemy having fun in fancy dress, but I think the trouble is sim- pler: chancellors nowadays have no medals to wear, and at a Mansion House dinner that makes them feel naked. The Lord Mayor should urge Mr Brown to come in the black and gold robes of his office. This would start an instant tradition — the City is good at them — and be worth two points on the gov- ernment's stock, thus pleasing everybody.
To the refuge
WHAT did wonders for it was the declara- tion of the Bank of England's indepen- dence. The mere announcement, says the Bank smugly, was enough to reduce the markets' long-term expectations of infla- tion — from something like 41/4 per cent to something like 35/s per cent. Clearly, such announcements should be made more often. Equally clearly, the markets still do not believe that the Bank will get inflation down below 21/2 per cent — the last gov- ernment's missed target — and then keep it down. They have seen too many false; dawns and press-button solutions. The Bank itself can see plenty of inflation stored up in the system and it is easy to guess that its early actions will be tough ones. Its economic maestro, Mervyn King, gave out his forecasts this week from a bunker signposted 'To the refuge'. Soon he will be joined by the new breed of indepen- dent experts — 'There's no team that can- not be strengthened,' he murmured politely — and I shall await the call. Giving expen- sive advice and getting my tea and biscuits from a gatekeeper in a pink coat would be right up my street. I do hope, though, that the new Chancellor has something nice lined up for Nigel Lawson.
O N Lawson 1988
THAT seems the least he can do after lift- ing his first proposal wholesale from his old antagonist. It is nine years since Chancellor Lawson amazed and horrified his Treasury officials by asking them to plan for an inde- pendent Bank of England. Not, as he need- lessly explained, that he believed in the superior wisdom of the Bank — no Chan- cellor has been more beastly to it — but this was how to build the control of infla- tion into the system. He put the idea up to Margaret Thatcher, who turned it down smartly, and it remained secret until he raised it in his resignation speech. I said at the time that it was as if Cromwell had offered Dominion status to Connaught. Back into the Treasury's files went its plans: the Bank to set short-term interest rates and monetary targets, the government to set the framework, the Treasury to be responsible for public borrowing, the offi- cial reserves to be split so that the Bank could have some of its own . . . All of this has now reappeared, word for word, so Mr Brown must be grateful that some man- darin could still remember where the file was kept. As for thanking Lord Lawson, he might revive Lady Thatcher's original offer, and put him next in line to be Governor of the Bank of England. Cromwell for Gover- nor-General!
Mixers and shakers
I ONCE merged Bell's whisky and Guin- ness in front of a television camera, and drank the mixture. It was disgusting. Ernest Saunders, though, swore that merging the two would be good for us and that his sub- sequent merger of Guinness with Distillers would be better still. It would create a champion able to take on Japanese samurai and American cowboys. Distillers itself was the product of just such a merger, which had brought all the major Scotch whisky producers together. They had been lively competitors. They became a deeply dozy company. Guinness made money from tak- ing them over and waking them up, but here we are again, asked to drink to anoth- er merger, as Guinness joins forces with Grand Metropolitan. Will it create a new champion at last? A better company or just a bigger one? Like the old Distillers? My research confirms that Bell's is an improved whisky these days but that Guinness is harder to find. I am even offered Murphy's. The genuine article does not merge with anything except champagne.
Die now, pay later
GOOD news and bad news from Clerical Medical to a faithful policy-holder, on the books for 40 years. That made him an owner of the business, or it used to before his life office sold itself out to the Halifax. As a part of that deal there will be extra bonuses, and a letter from head office pass- es the good news on to him. The bad news is that before the bonus is paid, there is one simple qualification he will have to meet. He must drop dead. Clerical Medical thinks this a splendid idea, and so must the Hali- fax, after buying his business with post- dated, post-obit cheques. That's mutual ownership for you, or rather for the man- agement. As William Saroyan told the life assurance salesman: 'No, thanks — I don't intend to die, not even for a profit.'
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