CITY AND SUBURBAN
The juggernaut lurches but stays on the road with a little help from its enemies
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
One of the few pleasures of opposition must be to loosen the wheels of a jugger- naut and see it roll majestically into the ditch. This week brought such a chance in a deserving cause. The government's Finan- cial Services and Markets Bill was wobbling, something procedural had come unscrewed, and it would only stay on the road if the opposition was prepared to help it. Other- wise, if ministers wanted to push a bill like this through Parliament, they would have to start again. It was long argued that the one thing worse than the last Financial Services Act would be the next one, and on the same principle another bill might have been more illiberal than this one, which may be why the opposition muffed its chance — but muffed or funked it was. The juggernaut will be back on the road in the spring and nothing can stop it now. Opposition spokesmen grumble that the City will not supply them with the ammunition they need by telling them what is wrong with the bill. City firms will have to live with the new regime and do not want to cross it. They saw Mick New- march, the Prudential's chief executive, brought down for that, and they know that resisting the regulators will now be an offence in itself. The powers embodied in the bill extend far beyond the City and its mar- kets, and those who find themselves on the wrong side can wave goodbye to rights and liberties they might have taken for granted. A missed chance for them and all of us.
Nat sells up
NOW look what Nat West has found in the toy cupboard: a stately home, set in 441 acres of parkland, with its own cricket pitch, tennis court, croquet lawn, golf course and lake. Every amenity, including 280 bed- rooms, plus staff accommodation. Mortgage finance available, or would suit Internet bil- lionaire of sociable disposition. Inquiries to Savills. Guide price: £15 million. This is Heythrop Park in Oxfordshire, once a ducal mansion (grand baroque façade by Thomas Archer) but for the last 30 years the bank's training headquarters and conference cen- tre. Times and needs have changed, the owner would settle for somewhere less state- ly with a mere 120 bedrooms, and the sale is well timed to help stave off the Bank of Scotland's advances. When I went to Heythrop, to sing for my supper, my hosts were in the process of selling their bank in
America, and I urged them not to let the proceeds burn a hole in their pockets. Hang on to the money, I said, resist the temptation to rush off and buy things. Some of the things they bought have since been sold and others are now for sale, along with Heythrop. Stately toy needs loving home.
Golden age
WHAT a good investment gold has been, this last millennium. The price of an ounce has gone up from 86 new pennies (well, say 17 shillings) to £194. Timothy Green takes us back through the years in The Millennium in Gold, published by Rosendale Press at £15, which means that a gold sovereign would buy you three. Venice, he says, made the market until London took over and Sir Isaac Newton set the price at three pounds seventeen shillings and tenpence ha'penny. Every so often our rulers, from Henry VIII onwards, have tried to bilk us by debasing the currency or even offering us paper promises, but only a government wilfully ignorant of history could have set out, as ours did, to sell the nation's gold and then hit the bottom of the market, accepting the lowest price on offer for two decades. Its folly, so Martin Vander Weyer wrote the other day, went unremarked — except, of course, in City and Suburban, where it was rubbed in before, during and after the event. Moral for the next millennium: put not your trust in princes, let alone in their promises. They will never be as good as gold.
Outing Big Ed
I AM pleased that Big Ed Balls has come out of the closet. He has exchanged his shad- owy existence as Gordon Brown's grey emi- nence and guru on endogenous growth theo- ry for the formal title of Chief Economic Adviser to the Treasury, which means that in those circular corridors peace has broken out. When this Chancellor arrived, he was impatient and inexpert with the Treasury's machine, clashing its gears, forcing Terry Burns, his chauffeur, to take a back seat, and finally pressing the ejector button. He was accustomed to his own machine, an exclusive model which would be assembled in Grosvenor House to be lubricated by Geof- frey Robinson. Mr Balls was part of it, and so was Mr Brown's mouthpiece, Charlie Whelan. Then, earlier this year, the machine was got at, and Geoffrey and Charlie flew off — just as well, for they were distinctly non-standard parts. Without them the two machines mesh in to one another, to the general advantage, as Ed's outing shows.
Good for Gus
THE big winner is Gus O'Donnell, who I first met when he was Nigel Lawson's soft- spoken press secretary — not at all the Char- lie type. John Major inherited him and, on moving next door to No. 10 Downing Street, took Gus with him, though he was not the Alastair Campbell type, either. Some people toil and some spin. The hardest thing about being the prime minister's press secretary must be to know when to stop and what to do for an encore, but Gus got this right. Resist- ing the blandishments of publicists and pub- lishers, he slipped quietly back to the Trea- sury and got on with his work, every now and again doing two people's work Now he has taken on the work (though not, as yet, the title) of the Treasury's second most senior mandarin, and if he does not go pop must be going to the top. No spin needed.
Swiss roll-back
I LOOK forward to opening negotiations with Christoph Blocher, the Swiss nationalist who stands for lower taxes, neutrality and keeping foreigners out unless they bring their money with them. To everybody's sur- prise except mine, these ideas have gone down well with his country's voters, even though they will never get Switzerland into the European Union, or its currency into the euro. The Swiss franc will just have to rub along by itself. It can be done. Switzerland must be our natural partner in an Anglo- Helvetian currency zone and co-prosperity sphere, but I shall have to persuade Mr Blocher that we are rich enough to be let in.
Previous page
