Cover

When Red is not enough

Bob Young says the FSA has big fish to fry and as regulated individuals we all have to accept that there will be consequences should we act inappropriately or with poor judgement. It’s time we all held our hands up, accept the responsibilities we have and accept what comes our way

With the Election campaign finally over

we can now hopefully get back to concentrating on the matters in hand and the problems that need to be resolved.

It seems somehow ironic that at a time when every politician in the land was spouting forth about the massive issues that needed to be addressed immediately, they were effectively taking five weeks off from doing any real work to solve those very same problems. Then again, no-one is saying we have the perfect political system and making a judgement call on the month of April and the first week of May this year, that would have to be the understatement of the century.

What was truly noticeable about this campaign was the even greater focus on individuals than ever before. If we were in any doubts that we have moved to a more presidential type of

18 moRtgage intRoduceR JUNE 2010

politics, a more US-style campaign focus, then this would have been truly dispelled.

Of course, the Leaders’ Debates added fuel to the fire in this regard; voters seemed truly polarised by the individuals not the parties. I wonder how many times Labour candidates were met with the response, “I’m not voting for Brown”, even though technically they were voting for their constituency MP and the actual political party, not the leader.

The flip side of this was the growth in support for the Liberal Democrats at the start of the campaign, predominantly because of the strong showing by Nick Clegg in the first debate.

“I’m voting for Nick Clegg,” would have been an oft-heard viewpoint rather than perhaps a focus on the Lib Dems or indeed their policies – having said this a sharper focus on the ‘third party’ over

the course of the campaign coupled with a squeeze ended up resulting in a relatively poor showing for them. This focus on individuals, particularly the leaders, was always evident and with such a stress on one human being it was obvious that sooner or later, cracks would begin to show. “We’re only human, born to make mistakes” would have been a completely apt refrain particularly when we consider the campaign Gordon Brown had – ‘Bigotgate’ being the most obvious example of this.

And yet it would seem that voters did not actually care that much about such mistakes, indeed, they tended to identify more with those politicians who acknowledge their mistakes, deal with them and move on. Whether or not they want these types of people running the country however is a moot point. In all of this it is rather surprising, and Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48