Osborne Clashes With Balls

The House of Commons were pretty heated yesterday between the chancellor, George Osborne, and the shadow chancellor, Ed Balls. It all comes down to yesterday’s issue of the Spectator Magazine in which it interviewed Osborne. During the interview Osborne accused Balls of being directly involved in the LIBOR fixing scandal at Barclays, along with other senior advisors and ministers in Gordon Brown’s cabinet. He did this, with no evidence whatsoever.

This also took place in the context of the vote over whether there should be a judge led inquiry or a parliamentary inquiry. Labour is still advocating a judge-led inquiry whilst the Tories want the parliamentary version. The Tories did win the vote in the Commons, and Labour has promised to co-operate. The difference between the two types of inquiry is that the judge-led inquiry would reach deeper, look into the whole of the banking sector (rather than just the Barclays’ LIBOR scandal) and take longer. With this in mind it seems bizarre that the Tories are accusing Labour of trying to cover up the Barclays’ scandal. The Tories believe that the Labour may be implicit due to the recently leaked memo and the fact that Labour was in charge of the country whilst it happened. If Labour really were trying to cover up the Barclays’ scandal, why would they be advocating the more intrusive inquiry that would be more likely to uncover Labour wrongdoing?

The Front Cover of the Spectator titled: J'accuse