Labour Beats Hester

Stephen Hester, chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland, has finally refused to accept his bonus of £963,000. But let’s not give him much applause. The only reason he’s backed down is because Labour were going to put the issue to a vote in the House of Commons, which they almost certainly would have won as the Liberal Democrats would have remembered at last that they were meant to be a party with a conscience! If it had been left to the Conservatives, Hester would have received the bonus (which, believe it or not, was only 60% of what he’d received in previous payouts - imagine how much he already has!) because the government did not want bank executives to think about going elsewhere to ply their trade. Let them go, as far as I’m concerned. In these days of austerity, we’ll find a way to manage without the greedy fat cats; economic advancement isn’t the only thing worth caring about.