Osborne's Trojan Regulator

Louise Armitstead in The Telegraph reports yesterday's ECOFIN meeting with hyperbolic praise for George Osborne,

EU victory for George Osborne
The City is in line for a major boost after European finance ministers agreed to position the new banking super-regulator in London, rather than Frankfurt.

But what is this victory? And how can it be described as such? What has Ms Armitstead been drinking?

The story revolves around the announcement that one of the new EU regulatory bodies will be based in London. That is a victory? What, that London will pay host to the European Banking Authority? So it will create a few jobs, yes, a few cleaners and the odd secretary will be employed locally granted. But the staff will all be Eurocrats, so this is no big win.

Look, accepting financial suzerainty from Brussels is no victory, it is an abject defeat. Accepting the sugared gift on an EU Agency is like having a rival administer a dose of laudanum and boasting about the get well card that came with it.

Mr Osborne said that having the regulator in London was a "key UK requirement" for which he had won "support from other member states".
Talks with the European Parliament will now resume but all sides are thought to want to secure an agreement quickly. The EU aims to have three new Europe-wide institutions regulating banks, insurance companies and securities markets up and running by January 1, 2011.

The vote for London, which is an important win for the Chancellor, will be welcomed both by British and international banks which have felt increasingly persecuted by European regulators.

A source close to the meeting said: "The Ecofin council recognised that London is Europe's only truly global financial centre. The others might not like that but there's no point pretending otherwise and this is recognition of that."

So out of three new EU financial regulators London gets one, and we are supposed to be happy about that.

I though that the Government was going on about the way in which the Bank of England was going to regain its regulatory role. It won't. What it will do is act as the carapace of power, hollowed out and left impotent by our real masters across the Channel. Leaving the people with a false impression, connived at by our so called Eurosceptic government. It will allow Mr Osborne to stand tall in Brussels, but so will having a ramrod hammered up his rectum.

And what benefit do we get by having this new governing body nestling, asplike, in our bosum? Well some of our senior bankers will be able to take their masters out to lunch.

As Sophocles put it so well,

So now I find that ancient proverb true,
Foes' gifts are no gifts: profit bring they none.