So Osborne, we now learn, is determined to sell off RBS and Lloyds before the election to prevent Labour, if it wins the next election which looks increasingly likely, from keeping them in the public sector and breaking them up in order to reconstruct them as agents to drive a national economic recovery.
That says it all about the government’s priorities. It is more important to them to privatise everything they can in pursuit of their real objective of a fully marketised State rather than to compel these banks, of which the taxpayers own 82% of RBS and 39% of Lloyds, to prioritise lending to industry to kickstart the economy and get growth going at last.
Even more significantly, an enforced sale before the election will at their current share value lose taxpayers £24 billions!
That is truly staggering when Osborne has been prepared to cut £18bn from benefits plus a further £81bn from public services in the name of unavoidable austerity.
Yet at the same time he is now disposing of assets which will gratuitously lose the public coffers £24bn.
Privatisation ideology trumps hardship for the poorest.
