Brown U-Turns on Fault with Bank Regulation

Do you recall Gordon Brown the Prime Minister saying that the banking crisis was brought on my a world wide problem and nothing to do with Gordon Brown the Chancellor?

Do you recall Vince Cable warning both Gordon Brown the Chancellor and Gordon Brown the Prime Minister of serious flaws in banking regulation that needed to be dealt with?

You probably won't recall George Osborne nodding his ascent of the former and barracking the later.

Well in an interview to be aired tonight Gordon Brown has finally admitted that he was wrong.

"In the 1990s, the banks they all came to us and said, 'Look, we don't want to be regulated, we want to be free of regulation.' And everybody in the City was saying ... and all the complaints I was getting from people was, 'Look you're regulating them too much.' And actually the truth is that globally and nationally we should have been regulating them more."

As for the Tories he said they had urged him to be even lighter handed on the banks adding:

"You don't listen to the industry when they say, 'This is good for us.' You've got to talk about the whole public interest.

"And so we are tougher on the banks and tougher on the way they behave and we can be relied on to make sure the banks act in the national interest."

So who would you want in charge of the economy?

• Someone who's taken soundings knows what he's talking about and is still saying we need to be tough on banks, like Vince
• Someone who's prepared to act because one interest group have said it was god for them who then realises later, when it is too late, that other views are important, like Gordon
• Someone who doesn't seem to know what is going on or realise how bad things are and is prepared to carry on, like George.

I know which of those three I'd rather have. The steadying yet firm hand, the foresight and forethought of Vince Cable stands out head and shoulders above the other options.

That's why a vote for the Liberal Democrats is not a wasted vote this time around on May 6th. It actually makes sense to vote for the party that's been making sense over our biggest problem for the last decade.