Tories accuse Brown of selling out the City in deal with France
Positioning of Sarkozy's man to run financial services is criticised by Hague
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Independent Minds
AFP
The Tories say the French government has the City in its sights and that MrBarnier's (pictured) appointment would help Paris's cause.
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Gordon Brown was accused yesterday of failing to protect the British national interest by handing the French a powerful European post which could allow them to shackle the City of London.
The Tories claimed the Prime Minister made a secret deal with Nicolas Sarkozy in which the French President backed the Labour peer Baroness (Cathy) Ashton as Europe's "foreign minister" on Thursday, in return for being able to put his man in as the commissioner in charge of financial services and the internal market.
That important post is expected to go to Michel Barnier, a former French foreign minister, when the new Commission team is named in the next few weeks. He would be the first Frenchman to take charge of the single market, and would also become a Commission vice-president, the same rank as Lady Ashton.
The Tories say the French government has the City in its sights and that Mr Barnier's appointment would help Paris's cause. William Hague, the shadow Foreign Secretary, said: "If Gordon Brown has done a deal that would mean a French commissioner being in charge of the economic issues that affect Britain the most then that could be a serious concern. Our French partners have a different view on market issues that touch on Britain's vital economic interests. I look forward to the Government taking this opportunity to be completely open about what has been agreed."
In a letter to the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, Mr Hague said: "The financial services sector is an area of extreme sensitivity for the British national interest. It is of crucial importance to the future of a pro-growth EU that there is no retreat from the principle of a free market within the EU."
Downing Street dismissed the Tory claim as "absurd". A spokesman for Mr Brown said: "Under the Tories, the UK wouldn't have had the High Representative [foreign minister's] job. We would be totally sidelined."
Many in the City have long entertained the theory that the French government secretly covets London's position as the world's second-largest centre for hedge fund activity, after New York.
The proposed European directive on "alternative investment funds" already threatens closer oversight of the sector across Europe, and is thought by some to be an attempt to erode London's competitive edge. Many hedge funds are based in Mayfair, and some are already said to be considering moves abroad to escape higher taxation and tougher regulation.
Longer term, the new French Commissioner will also have a powerful influence on the choice of chief for the new European Systemic Risk Council, a body that will oversee financial stability across the Union, and who must be the head of a European central bank.
Given that the UK remains outside the eurozone and the mixed record of the British regulators in preventing the financial crisis, some believe that the chairmanship of that body will go to another Frenchman – Jean-Claude Trichet, currently head of the ECB.
The Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, would be a strong contender for the deputy role, given London's existing pre-eminence in financial services. But the preponderance of Frenchmen in key economic positions might tip the balance back in Mr King's favour.
A number of other European financial regulatory bodies are also planned, roughly along the lines of the UK's Financial Services Authority. How much power they will be given vis-a-vis national bodies is being hotly debated in Brussels, and again Mr Barnier will have powerful a say in that. The Treasury has made no secret of its hostility to the European "supervisory authorities" being granted the authority to override national regulators.
Michel Barnier: The silver fox
*Born
9 January 1951
*Nickname
Silver fox
*Former positions
French foreign minister, French agriculture minister, French EU affairs minister, European Commissioner for regional policy
*Other strings to his bow
Co-organised 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville and was awarded the Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur
*On himself
"My line is to look ahead. I am someone who is very practical"
*On France
"France is not great when it is arrogant. France is not strong if it is alone"
*On French-bashing
"In the end, the most inaccurate cliches are obscuring the most obvious truths"
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Comments
Incidentally after your last plea Gordon has now agreed to amend his bill, it will now read 'deficit will be halved in 4 years and free fags will be supplied to all those in asylums forced to exist on smoked salmon. 'All things are possible in this Brown pre-election world!
if
for hedge apply to min of ag and fish
now called offenvo or some such newspeak name
in the alternative I would opt for the asylum where we welcome refugees from Brownland- save that they would appear prima facie sane
If these people spit the dummy, so be it.
The European Commissioners who make our law should have stood down at the end of October. Did these Commissioners have the authority to appoint a new President and High rep???????
There is no democracy left. the EU is run like a Stazi State. Time for a referendum on our very expensive, continued membership.
Just hot air to suck up to their City friends, the anti-EU faction and the general unfocussed Brown-haters.
The mild-mannered Barnier is no Fifth column and the UK and France are not at war. Apart form possible deviants in lunatic asylums with borderline personality disorder, the only napoleonic figure in France nowadays reportedly befriends your own Tony Blair-Buonaparte. In fact such figures are as rare in France nowadays as Britons believing they are Oliver Cromwell, Lord Nelson or Lord Kirchner. Besides, as a result of years of active lobbying efforts in the late 1990sd and 2000s, the UK already controls a large chunk of the EC as I could myself experience nearlly every day during my professional life. Like the channel tunnel, it may take some time for such a peculiar and wonderfully unique island nation (though Japan ... but I hate to say that Japanese tea, not to mention Suntory Whisky, is better ...) to come to realise that living in a tighter European community of spirit with increasingly closer bonds of various nature is not going to bring you cohorts of aliens or even rabies. The essentially New Britain policies of Tony Blair and Co have already brought you enough ills, if not (yet ?) rabies, which I do not wish you as I rather like your country and its stringent sense of humour, so hard to immitate for an imperfect human being as myself.
A Frenchman from Paris (who hates Napoleon and football and hardly thinks any game should be replayed or should have even played in the first instance - I rather think that fox hunting is a more civilised and less damaging game as far as human relations are concerned and also tend to consider handball as a more spontaneous sort of game)
I also proffer the notion if the Parisan's want the Masters Of the Univesre (should have been called MASTERBATER's) of the square mile they are welcome to them as I understand La Guillotine can still becalled upon to rectify errors caused by birth defects!!!
WE WOULD BE THE ONLYWESTERN ECONOMY TO BACKTRACK ON THE G20 POLICIES BASED ON GORDON BROWN'S MODEL WHICH HAVE BROUGHT THE US AND THE EUROZONE OUT OF RECESSION
BUT VIEWING FROPM THE LOFTY HEIGHTS OF MILLIONAIRES ROW AS CAMERON AND OSBOURNE DO
IOT WOULD FEEL TO THEM LIKE THERE THEE WAS NO RECESSION THEY MAY YET REGRET THE PARTY OF THE POOR BOLLOCKS WHICH 1 THEY AGED MEMBERSHIP WON'T LIKE A
2WILL GAIN THEM FEW LABOUR CONVERTS INSULTING THE INTELLIGENCE OF THOSE WHO WENT THROUGH TWO TORY RECESSIONS NOT CAUSED BY BANKERS IS HARDLY ASENSIBLE WAY FORWARD!
Let us not forget that the Pro Israeli Group along with the Neocons control America from the highest to the lowest. WE DON'T WANT THEM HERE.
This is how our MP's work anything for money, their expenses were not enough, once again the people will be sold out.
if the hedge funds were to bugger off and hopefully die somewhere else then large parts of the City would probably breathe a sigh of relief and get back to what the City is supposed to be for, raising capital for our largest enterprises. The foreign exchange market is so entrenched in London due to its critical mass it isn't going to go anywhere. The wider economy would benefit from share prices better reflecting the value of a company's operations ; instead of reflecting how vulnerable the company is to speculative attacks on its share price.
unfortunately we're probably stuck with the ironically named hedge funds (they should really be called gambling funds because that is what they are) and Hague knows this and is just spouting drivel in that godawful accent of his again. Nothing that a good garotte wouldn't sort out.
I just hope the French aren't as inept as the English at regulation. The people that were running the FSA in the 5 or so years up to 2007 should have received the equivalent of a court martial for dereliction of duty. They have the power to dish out prison sentences. There should be the power to give them prison sentences when they let the entire country down by ignoring the shenanigans of their mates they used to work with. Well, lunch with, while their minions did the actual work. In days gone by these people would have gone to the guillotine. There's something to be said for it.
Very disappointing that for all Brown's evident and justified disgust at the operations of the Channel Islands (and the isle of Man etc) he seems to have been completely unable to do anything about it during his decade in government. I'd be interested to understand why not. So the average British working person (I object to Brown and Cameron's constant reference to 'families', like single/divorced/separated/childless people don't matter - fine, we won't pay tax then eh if we don't count?) continues to have to foot more than their fair share of the tax burden while the rich avoid theirs.