Lots of people have been perplexed over the timing of the Bank of England’s admission that it extended £61.6bn of loans to prop-up Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS. Why was it disclosed this week?
Well, the main reason is that the terriers at the National Audit Office were about to call the Bank’s bluff by revealing the secret loan in an upcoming report. Mervyn King merely decided it would look better for the Bank to confess independently. Read more
Donations figures: The City flocks to the Tories
The “macro” story on donations today (Electoral Commission figures for Q3 are out) is that the Tories received £5.27m in donations – more than the other 17 parties combined. Labour got just over £3m (mostly from unions) while the Lib Dems received £816,663.
A trawl through the Tory donors is interesting in terms of individual gifts:
Read more
Banks: Don’t treat us how we treat you
One of the biggest stories of the day is the Supreme Court ruling that banks can carry on charging big fees on personal overdrafts.
This is rich in irony given an apparent revelation in the House of Commons an hour ago. Vince Cable pressed Alistair Darling over the issue of the £61bn emergency loans to HBOS and RBS. Were the banks charged interest, he demanded? Read more
| About this blog | Blog guide |
Jim Pickard is the FT's chief political correspondent, having joined the lobby team in January 2008. He has been at the FT since 1999 as a regional correspondent, assistant UK news editor and property correspondent.
Kiran Stacey is an FT political correspondent, having joined the lobby in 2011. He started at the FT as a graduate trainee in 2008, working on desks including UK companies and US equity markets before taking over the FT's Energy Source blog.
FT's latest UK politics & policy news