Liberal-Tories Push Through Banks Cover-Up

The Liberal-Tory Government has pushed through their plan for a cover-up of the real Banking Scandal, by limiting it to a narrowly focussed, Parliamentary Inquiry.   That ensures as was seen at the Select Committee meeting that the bankers will be let off the hook.  The debate in the House of Commons showed that the Liberal-Tories are only interested in trying to score political points off Labour, not with getting to the bottom of the criminal activities of the Banks, and sections of the Capitalist State.  The Liberal-Tories have been in office for nearly two and a half years, or nearly half the length of this Parliament.  The Liberals frequently still speak as though they were not part of the Government, when they want to distance themselves from their actions.  Both of them whenever their is a problem refuse to take any responsibility for it, and instead trot out the now ridiculous mantra that "it is all Labour's fault".

I've set out previously why we can't accept a Parliamentary Inquiry.  A look at even the Tories on the Select Committee shows the number of them who are intimately connected with Banks and City Institutions.  A Parliamentary Inquiry is like putting the fox in charge of the hen house.  But, yesterday also showed that much of the time of any such inquiry will be taken up by Liberal-Tory MP's grandstanding, and trying to out compete each otehr in how much they can launch rhetorical attacks on Labour.  As pretty much every commentator has pointed out, the Select Committe hearing demonstrated that MP's are simply not equipped to conduct the kind of inquiry needed.

The Liberal-Tory cover-up, however, might still not fly despite yesterday's vote.  For one thing, the venom between the two sides is likely to mean that getting agreement on composiiton of the Committee, on Terms of Reference and scope of the Inquiry may be impossible to achieve, certainly any time soon.  If Labour does what it should, and demands that the Terms of Reference and scope are thrown as wide as possible, its unlikely the Liberal-Tories will agree, because that will not serve their purposes of a cover-up, and simply smearing Labouring.  In the meantime, the demands from the street for bankers to be hung from lampposts is unlikely to be assuaged by the Liberal-Tories proposals for a cover up.  Labour should organise a widespread campaign for a Workers Inquiry to mobilise that anger.  Already, we are seeing sections of the media, such as Paul Mason on Newsnight, raising the question of why people like Diamond are happy to be questioned by MP's, but continually refuse to be forensically questioned even by journalists.  The well of opinion for an open Inquiry, and against a cover-up, is likely to force the Liberal-Tories into yet another U-Turn, like those over the Pasty Tax and so on.

But, of course, Labour does have questions to answer too.  There is no reason to believe that a Judge led Inquiry will have any real incentive to properly uncover the truth of the links between the Banks, politicians, the State, and the Media either.  That is why we need the TUC to organise a Workers Inquiry into the Banks to uncover all these links, and how they adversely affect ordinary working people.  That is especially the case now the Liberal-Tories have decided to organise their Parliamentary cover up.

In the meantime, the Liberals have engaged in another of their periodic public relations exercises to try to prove they are not the same as the Tories.  This time over Lords Reform.  The question is why we need to reform the Lords rather than just abolish it!  Why do we need one group of elected or unelected politicians, being paid large amounts of money, just to check up on some other group of politicans?  That is clearly just jobs for the boys.  The proposals for an elected Lords is for people to be elected for 15 year terms!  That is like giving a politican a job for life, which is no different than the current Lords set up.  The job or checking up on, censuring, and removing MP's belongs to the electorate.  Originally, the Liberal-Tories promised to introduce a right of recall of MP's, but that proposal seems to have disappeared from sight.  160 years ago, the Chartists demanded Annual elections, so that Governments that were failing to perform could be thrown out.  If the Liberals really want to advance the cause of democracy they would drop their demands for the retention of the Lords, and press for the right of recall, and for Annual Elections.

Of course, they won't do that.  Liberals are already way over represented in the House of Lords compared to their electoral support, and they have showed that they are more than happy to ditch their election promises, for example over Tuition Fees, in order to provide themselves with lucrative Government jobs.  Their cringeing support for the Tories proposals over the Bank cover up, is just another illustration that there is no difference between Liberals and Tories, and both have little interest in democracy and accountability.