Powerful interests block City reform

Nothing sets a journalist’s pulse racing more than a good row. Our ceaseless lust for friction has been fed expertly by Nicolas Sarkozy in recent days, when he proclaimed that the "English are the big losers" in the carve-up of top EU jobs. Sarkozy’s hints that his nominee to the European commission, Michel Barnier, is planning an onslaught on the City of London seem to carry the promise not only of a tussle between two powerful nations but also between two economic philosophies.

It is a measure of how gullible most of us in the media are – and I’ve often been guilty of this weakness myself – that the story has been reported with barely any critical analysis. It is true that Barnier is the first Frenchman to be put in charge of overseeing the union’s internal market in 50 years and that France has been less eager to leave the financial services industry to its own devices than Britain.

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