Financial Markets

The next Conservative Government are looking forward to selling back these shareholdings at a considerable profit. One of the things that might endanger that is a return to 2007 levels of mortgage lending. The Chancellor said that that applied only to RBS, HBOS and Lloyds, but those first two were the two worst offenders. I do not know whether the Chancellor is still a monetarist, but that year was the peak year of broad money growth at around 13 per cent., and if we return to that rate, these problems will return. I hope that he does not quite mean what he said in the press release.