Barclays boss Bob Diamond told a Treasury Committee hearing that taxpayers should not bail out banks, and that those banks which get into trouble should be allowed to fail. Fair enough, but perhaps taxpayers can have their money back before the likes of the Royal Bank of Scotland go the way of the unlamented Lehman Brothers. Barclays, it may be recalled, avoided the need for largesse from the British public by jumping into the substantial pockets of the royal families of Qatar and Abu Dhabi rual families At the time, Vince Cable, then the Liberal Democrats’ Treasury spokesman, called the deal “a scandal of monumental proportions”. But he may think something entirely different now. He may have to ask the Prime Minister what precisely that is.
