The Economy

The tripartite system was put in place following the repeated failure of self-regulation and of the regulation of the Bank of England in the period before 1997. I have said on the record loud and clear that we did not regulate the banks in a tough enough way, but throughout that period the current Chancellor personally attacked me for being too tough with regulation and for going too far. The idea is to replace a tripartite system with a quartet system that is even more complicated and byzantine, and we will look at that in detail in the coming months, but the Chancellor is playing a very dangerous game.