There you go, you and the Wail seem to be conflating The Co-op Group, the Co-op Bank and Paul Flowers. Why on earth should Balls hand back a donation that was made by the Co-op Group, especially when the tories have yet to hand back the money they received from Azil Nadir?

But the other part of the scandal is Labour's alleged facilitation / encouragement of the mergr with Britannia, whicch brought the Co-op down. Same guys who hastily facilitated Lloyds "rescue" of HBoS to much self-congratulation. As I predicted on here as they were doing that all it would do would destroy an otherwise strong bank. It did and the taxpayer had to bail out Lloyds. There is a pattern here - uttter, utter incompetence by Labour when it comes to anything financial (seemingly, other than when it benefits certain members of their party).

If the Tories have an sense they will make this Co-Op story runand run, via enquiries, up until the election. That will serve to remind the voters of who was in power when the banking system and who failed to oversee the sectors regulation - as apparently demonstrated by this case. If they do that, I think they'll get a majority - especially with inevitable pre-election engineered improvement in the economy, feel-good factor, etc that each party always manages to engineer for a few months.

As was pointed out to you at the time, if any bank was allowed to fail, the economic consequences would've been far worse, notwithstanding the threat of civil unrest when a whole sector of the banking public could not access [itheir[/i money.

As for letting the Co-op saga run, I still believe there is the potential for even greater damage to the tory party, quite apart from what may be revealed in ongoing trials at the Old Bailey. As for the banking crisis of 2008, the conservatives have been busy attempting to airbrush from the internet various speeches made by leading tories in opposition pre-2010. Fortunately for the British public, the internet is not as easy to rewrite as a history text book.

This is going to be a very messy 18 months, at the end I'm still of the opinion that the tory 'dirty-tricks' strategy will bite them on the a[ir[/ise

No what should have happened is that Britannia's depositors should have been supported and wound up as expeditiously as possble. They should not have dragged a second institution down with it.

The only pattern here is your ridiculous take on the history of the banking crisis and its consequences.



You do realise the problems with the Co-op bank have been a running for several years? That is its continued weakness as a bank has not been set right by intervention under the previous Labour government and this government over the last three years?

Look at this from July 2012

rlhttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18898125rl

[iThe Chancellor, George Osborne, welcomed the deal.

"This is another step towards creating a new banking system for Britain that gives real choice to customers and supports the economy," he said.[/i

However from Robert Peston's blog

"In April of 2012, the Financial Services Authority - precursor of today's Financial Conduct Authority and Prudential Regulation Authority - told Co-op Group that it did not have appropriate management skills and that Co-op Bank had too little capital to be allowed to fulfil its ambition of becoming much bigger by buying more than 600 branches from Lloyds."

"For what its worth, senior FSA people have told me that their reluctance to be more aggressive with Co-op Bank is because of their perception that the Treasury and MPs from both parties wanted Co-op to become much bigger and more powerful."

From herehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25032296rl

So in April in 2012 we have the FSA saying the co-op had too little capital to be allowed to fulfil its ambition of becoming much bigger by buying more than 600 branches from Lloyds.

Yet four months later Osborne is saying what a good idea it is they buy the branches!

And you accuse Labour of failing to regulate the banks?

Polly Peck. There's a blast from the past. Yes, i'd agree that the Tories should have handed Nadir his money back, but its never going to happen.

I've thought for a couple of years that the Co-Op was being a tad ambitious, and being of a cynical disposition didn't buy into their ethics mantra. There was however a little bit of me that did want them to reveal a decent set of figures, and raise a middle digit to the rest.

Yes - as I said on this thread to the "merger" with Britannia in early 2009.

But it does seem strange that there are any number of investigations surrounding a bloke who allegedly tried to score £300 worth of drugs, yet Lord Green who presided over HSBC laundering £6bn of drug cartel money, not a bloody word.

Cameron's pathetic attempts to link Miliband to Flowers at Wednesday's PMQs has Lynton Crosby writ large all over it and could well come back to bite him on his 'arris'

Another from the "you couldn't make it up" department.

Jeremy Hunt commenting on Co-op Bank on Thursday's Question Timehttps://pbs.twimg.com/media/BZofUjGCcAAKWrn.png" >

Every time I see him, in photograph or on TV I can't help but think that he would have made an excellent replacement for Matthew Corbett on The Sooty Show.

Every picture I've ever seen of him, he looks like someone has just rammed a broomstick up his ar[is[/ie

Labour would never stoop to such levels....

Very cosy indeed. But Labour wouldn't cosy up to bankers would they?

Labour have real questions to answer about this scandal. Probably why they are attempting to close down scrutiny by wailing about smears. A timely reminder of the rank hypocrisy and sheer incompetence so rife in the nasty party of British politics.

Speaking of questions...

As far as I can tell there was no Labour party involvement in that merger. Ed Balls supported a Tory private members bill that allowed the merger of mutual societies with PLC's and that is it. Has that Tory MP got questions to answer as well?

All Ball's did was support a bill the Co-op was in favour of which is hardly a scandal and its what you would expect a "Labour and Co-operative" MP to do. I dare say the other 30 odd Labour and Co-operative MP's were in favour of it as well. Along with the Tory who's bill it was in the first place!

BTW Ed Balls was Education Secretary in 2009 when the merger occurred and the merger was purely a commercial agreement between two parties that unfortunately for the Co-op was a very bad deal.

It also seems none other than David Davis agrees with the very points I made above about the deal to buy branches from Lloyds

So based on that do you [istill [/ithink the Tories will want this to run and run?

It's pretty clear now the smears and an outright lie from Clegg (he has said Flowers himself gave Ed Balls £50K, not the Co-op group) are not only an attempt to score political points but to deflect attention away from Osborne's and the Treasuries failings regarding the Co-op bank since they have been in office.

IMO they are going to look pretty stupid flinging mud now one of their ow senior politicians is saying Osborne has questions to answer.