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I know, I know: David Cameron, the guy who manfully overcame his privileged and cosseted upbringing, is the one who’s going to be living at that address. But the man who put Cameron at Number Ten Downing is a Frenchman named Baudoin Prot, the chief executive officer of BNP Paribas, a huge multinational banking firm — and Cameron and the Tories had better do as he says, or he can break them just as he made them.
How did M. Prot become the de facto ruler of the British Isles? By holding the British economy hostage. As David Dayen mentioned earlier, Prot’s analysts at BNP Paribas, alarmed that Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, was on the verge of an agreement with the Labour Party to form a new government, let it be known that if Clegg dared form a government with anyone but Cameron and the Tories, they were going to downgrade the UK’s AAA credit rating, thus putting the squeeze on an already-sickly Great Britain. That was enough to send Clegg scurrying into the arms of David Cameron.
So, what will life be like under the Prot government? Well, if you’re someone who, like David Cameron, grew up in abject wealth, it promises to be lovely. Ditto if you’re a banker or a corporate director. But if you’re not one of those blokes, well — too bad, so sad. If you’re one of those greedy old grannies who can’t die fast enough to save the exchequer some pelf that could be going towards a corporate tax cut (what, and you thought the Tories cared about the deficit? Hahahahaha!), then guess what? Your life is about to get a good deal worse.
30 Comments
How is it this has no responses?
Great read PW, thanks for uncovering the money trail and how this all happened to get Cameron and the Libs in the same bed to take down Brown.
Rcc’d!
I SWEAR I commented on this earlier today?????
That’s because DDay (who I cited) mentioned it, so you probably commented in the thread on his News post on the subject. He called it “thumb on the scale”, I call it blackmail.
Come off it! We know that the Brits do not allow the European continent to have any real influence in their empire. After all, look how long they have fought against the European Union. The Brits will go their own way and this “money trail” will wash away. Money plays no part in any decisions they make. I can’t wait to see how well the middle and lower economic classes are going to flourish.
wow. thanks PW, heartily rec. there is not so much as a whiff of this story anywhere
Perfect excuse to end our “special relationship” with the UK.
This is a very silly post.
We live in a silly world.
Can’t remember where I came across it, but wherever, it argues that there is NO diff among the “3″ parties in the U.K.
The Conservatives are closer to the Democrats than the Republicans. Republicans would be considered a fringe party.
The point of the report I heard was that they are all corp sellouts, like the U.S. Ds (although the latter is my opinion, not part of the report), and that includes the self-called Liberals Dems. To be sure, U.S. Rs would be a fringe in any civilized country.
The R’s would be a mainstream party in Somalia. It’s their Xanadu.
Heh. Note that I typed “civilized” country, anticipating I might get a response like yours. I’m sure there are many countries in Stans or Africa, for example, where U.S. Rs would be considered lefties. *g*
To the R’s, Somalia would be considered the height of civilized.
I’ve heard that about the 2 parties in the US.
More people voted against the Tories than voted for them.
Thanks, PW! Great read.
Well you can’t imagine that the UK is owned by bankers but that the Obama Administration somehow just slipped past the bankers. The logical extension of this piece is to own up to the reality we have in the U.S.
Chris Dodd of all people is writing financial “reform”? Please.
If your right PW then English banks are weaker than we thought and I think your right.
I still wonder what the average Brit would think if he or she knew that a French banker was the guy who picked their new PM and government.
Speaking of lunatic fringe Rs.
Scratch a Republican and just under the surface you’ll find an anti-democratic totalitarian fascist wannabe.
David Dayen has a fresh cross-post up: The American Power Act – A Climate Bill Oil Companies Can Love
Thanks v. much for this, info. I know that I’ve read a tiny bit about M. Prot and BP Paribas before (probably here; where else would have the “real” news?). I was curious about the outcome of the British election and wondered what the final result “really meant.” I thought I smelled the work of corporate bankstirism there. And: oh ho, the Frogs are NOW running the UK??? Well, well, well… how low the mighty have fallen. I just hope we don’t get into some “former Yugoslavia” situation where the Poms and the Frogs get to duking it out again.
So, here we are. Meet your new boss, Great Britain. This is where it’s at. Your even more excessively entitled obscenely wealthy twits will benefit per usual, while the rest of you slags go back to being the feudal serfs that you always have been – don’t go getting no notions above your station! Back “downstairs” with rest of ya yobs.
This is the opening act for us chickens here in the USA, when we get to meet our new Chinese overlords soon enough, methinks.
Thanks for this. Very useful. I would point out that, as Tariq Ali mentioned yesterday on Democracy Now, the Labour Party also held savage cuts in store for the British working class, so there was really not much to pick as between the three parties.
Agree. If the Brits are going to be blackmailed, it’s better the Conservatives take the blame for it.
I think everywhere has savage cuts in mind for the middle and working classes, don’t you? Check out Greece and Spain, too. I heard that BHO called up Jose Zapatero to firmly dress him down for letting his working classes get out of hand (of course, Spain’s banks are, I’m sure, blameless and probably deserve tons of cash-money bail outs). Look out Spain: dey’s comin’ to git ya!
Indeed, they are in store. The question for the future is how does the left respond to the political space that is obviously being opened by this crisis. This will involve difficult choices and finding the way to a good strategy (I don’t believe in catastrophism–i.e. collapse automatically leads to popular gains). Both Papandreou and Zapatero are classical social democrats (indeed Papandreou heads up the remnant of the second international). Hugh’s point on nationalism is also relevant here. Will the right or the left move in to organize working people in the coming years. Obviously the left would have to be completely transformed ideologically and politically to play such a role, and would have to gets a massive amount of new blood. Recent decades have virtually wiped it out and produced all manner of confusion in the way it thinks and acts.
The problem with a downgrade in the UK rating by BNP is that it might not only blow up the UK but blowback on to the precarious finances of the eurozone itself, and banks like BNP. So I don’t put a lot of credence into it. I also agree with the nationalism argument that the British are unlikely to kowtow to the continentals. That’s one reason they kept the pound in the first place.
Every time I see Cameron I can’t help but think of Monty Python’s old segment on “upper-class twits”. I keep waiting for him to start licking his elbows or something. This guy looks like a George Bush clone to me – born into privilege and completely clueless as to the lives of ordinary people.
I will, however, give Cameron credit for a brilliant gambit in pulling the Lib Dems so close to him in government that they cannot ever oppose any Tory legislation, no matter how egregious or opposed to Lib Dem principles. They have been captured and are now in thrall to Cameron. Why? Because the Lib Dems actually lost seats in the election. Without a change in election law, which the Tories will never allow, the Lib Dems could easily come out even worse if Labour’s fortunes improve even modestly. So they will not bring down the Tory government under any conditions because it would cost them the little power they now have under the Tories. Brilliant move by Cameron to neuter the Lib Dems but probably bad for England. Let’s hope Labour can recover under a new, non-New Labour, leader and return to government in the next election.
The entire Tony Blair/Gordon Brown New Labour experiment has been a massive failure. I wish Obama would learn from this, but I think he’s so obsessed with one-sided bipartisanship and corporate support that he won’t have a clue.
Why didn’t Labour and Lib Dem out the jerk? That would have fired the public up on the side of (at least somewhat) progressive values. More votes against than for this “conservative” joke, but the piling on by Labour party members and the media about how “unrepresentative” a Labour/Lib Dem coalition would be reminded me of the USA.
The world weeps at yet another “Wall St. conservative.”