It probably seemed like a good idea at the time, as do so many things that subsequently come back to bite the arse of the idea's author and in this case the idea came from Gordon Brown, in all probability. You see, back in those heady days on the early 21st century when there was no more boom-and-bust and your average investment banker just had to look at a screen of figures and make a squillion quid in a heartbeat, everyone was so happy. And who made everyone happy? Why, investment bankers, of course! And who was the banker that delivered the greatest degree of delirious mirth and joy? Why, the mirthless and joyless Fred Goodwin, of course! And even before it seemed like (yet another) good idea, this time to measure the nation's happiness, New Labour felt it was necessary to reward the creators of happiness and contentment. What better way then to so reward, than to place the dour Scottish accountant in front of Her Maj for a good dubbing. Oh, how Gordie must be wishing now that her sword had slipped. Miliband (Ed) now calls for Goodwin's metaphorical decapitation.
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| Happier Days? |
It's so easy to criticise after the event. Brown wasn't the first (and won't be the last) politician to keep company with and later award the 'great and the good' only for them to turn out to be not so great and, in the end, not very good after all. Plus ca change.
The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) was a tremendous success story until it suddenly wasn't. RBS represented everything that was brilliant about the UK's financial services industry and the City of London in the noughties. Profits (real or, ultimately, imagined) ran into billions of pounds. Shareholders made millions in dividends. The bank even paid corporation taxes! RBS swallowed up other banks and finance houses and brought them into line with the exceptionally wonderful business models that Goodwin oversaw with his sturdy rod of iron accountancy. And then he was discovered to be a megolmaniac shagger that didn't actually know what a mortgage really was, let alone an SDO. And neither did the rest of the RBS board.
So Goodwin (and Lady Joyce) now live in 'disgrace'. That's the sort of disgrace, by the way, that means a meagre income of around £400,000 a year in pension and probably some other money. But the Leader of the Opposition has decided to heap upon that disgrace the ultimate ignomony of a review by the Honours Forfeiture Committee.
As all politicians say, pointlessly, at some point in their careers, "...let's be clear about this...". The Honours Forfeiture Committee has a brief to meet "at least once a year", to determine whether anyone that has received an honour (that the committee itself decided upon at some point in the past) should forfeit that honour because the recipient:
- has been found guilty by the courts of a criminal offence and sentenced to a term of imprisonment of more than three months; or
- has been censured/struck off etc by the relevant regulatory authority or professional body for actions or failures to act which are directly relevant to the granting of the honour.
- ...or both
| Heywood (L) and Kerslake - Shirty? |
Although many observers might think that Goodwin should have been sent to prison or banned from any of the professional bodies that he might be a member of related to his honour...he wasn't. The Honours Forfeiture Committee - if they ever meet to discuss Goodwin's case - will have to decide on the current Knight's fate based upon popular opinion, ethics and the morality of it all. So they probably won't. After all, whatever decision they take, they could face opprobrium given the revelatory nature of histories rewritten. Might be best to leave it alone?
The Forfeiture Committee is the responsibility of the Cabinet Secretary and the Head of the Home Civil Service. These roles (both of them) used to be held by Sir Gus O'Donnell. Now they are separately owned by Sir Jeremy Heywood and Sir Bob Kerslake, respectively. So two knights may be obliged to decide on the future of another, but to what ultimate point?
It seems that everyone hates Goodwin apart from Lady Joyce, perhaps, but one imagines that she might not be holding the same torch that she may have done before the former RBS CEO's super-injunction was quashed. Goodwin has come to represent everything that is demonised about the excess of global 'casino' banking (maybe that could become a 'Cableism' - hope not). It's hard to imagine what Goodwin does with his time these days, even if you felt like doing so. By all accounts, Goodwin was motivated by power, not greed. Megalomania is probably a condition that is somewhere on some psychiatric spectrum and can be treated with drugs. Who knows, maybe he's taking some. Maybe he's about to emerge as the ultimate apologist for the City's recent excess and become a philanthropist. Maybe he wants to buy new tents for the 'Occupy London' protestors so that Boris Johnson can't refer to them as 'crusty'. Maybe he's suffered enough? Do we really need a scapegoat to be dragged to the Cabinet Office in a tumbril and stripped of any remaining dignity along with his knighthood? Are we not better than that? Have we not the moral courage to understand what happened to the man...swept along by a misplaced belief that nothing could possibly go wrong and that he was, ultimately, the saviour of mankind?
Nah. Aff wi' his bastard heid...the bampot scunner...
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