Bond Villains?

While there are grey areas, if something would obviously have to be rescued by the State rather than allowed to go bust, then it belongs in public ownership, just as if something obviously would not, then it does not. Corner shops? Obviously not. But water? Obviously. The bond markets do not object to the public ownership of water everywhere else in the world apart from England and Chile, so there is no reason to assume that they would object to renationalisation, which ought in turn to lead to the National Grid that was proposed by Labour in 1979.

It is only in Britain that we accord this anti-democratic, quasi-constitutional status to the bond markets. When social democratic measures beyond anything proposed by the Labour Party since at least 1983, and far beyond anything suggested by Andy Burnham, are assumed as basic facts of life under Christian Democratic, Gaullist and similar governments, then does anyone ever mention the bond markets? Do those markets take the slightest interest, so to speak?

The best Chancellor of the Exchequer that the Conservative Party never had was Sir Peter Tapsell. As Keynesian and as Eurosceptical as Peter Shore, he identified the money markets, along with the media moguls and the intelligence agencies, as the heirs of the nabobs and the Whig magnates whom past generations of Tories had made it their defining cause to cut down to size and subject to the sovereignty of Parliament.