This can't possibly be true, can it? I mean, so far I've only seen it on the Guardian website. It appears that the Treasury is worried that the Government's much-vaunted levy on bank balance sheets may raise more money than expected....so they may reduce the size of the levy.
It would be hard to overstate what a dumb move this would be from a PR standpoint -- and if you don't believe me, just scroll through the article to read the comments from Guardian readers.
The levy's not much more than a gesture anyway: nobody could seriously argue that an annual charge of 0.04% of a bank's balance sheet comes anywhere close to the value that the banks derive from the implicit backstop provided by the government. But when the Government is banging on about "fairness" and how we're "all in this together", it's an important gesture. Reducing it in response to the supposed threat that banks might relocate to more friendly jurisdictions would only feed suspicions, and not just among Guardianistas, that the spending cuts aren't really about cutting the deficit at all: they're about a Thatcher-style shrinking of the state.
Already this week Nick Clegg (or "Clegglet" as I heard him described on Radio 5 this morning) has had to eat his words on student fees. Can't wait to hear what that old bank basher Vince Cable has to say about the levy.
* Yeah, I know it should be "levee".
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