The hearing, at which I was present, sought to challenge the Treasury for not keeping to the regulations stated in their spending criteria procedures, under a so-called ‘Green Book’ assessment. These procedures state that all investments of public money must take into account ‘environmental impacts’ and social issues ’so as best to promote the public interest’.

The three campaigning groups – World Development Movement (WDM), People and Planet and PLATFORM – therefore argued if the government holds the majority stakehold of a company abusing these criteria, it has a duty to intervene. A recent report commissioned by the groups has exposed how RBS’s investments have fallen seriously short of fulfilling these ethical criteria, and warrant government intervention.

Entitled ‘Royal Bank of Sustainability’, the report states that since 2006 RBS has been a dedicated investor in Arch Coal, the second largest coal producer in the US, who conduct mountain-top mining operations in the Appalachian mountains, Canada. It reveals how these operations have led to the disappearance of 300,800 acres of biologically diverse forest and contaminated rivers, poisoning the fish that serve as one of the local indigenous communities main food supplies. Furthermore, George Monbiot has revealed RBS  recently lent £8 billion to other companies in Canada who are mining the tar sands, an operation he has critiqued as the “biggest single industrial cause of carbon emissions”.

Another example of misplaced, damaging investments is the Irish company Tullow Oil, who earlier this year used RBS capital to embark on an oil exploration mission in a region of Africa that’s being subjected to a resource-driven civil war: the conflict over natural resources on the border of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda has led to the displacement of over 30,000 people, adding to the existing 1.4 million displaced people in the area.

In my view, these questionable investments, which are facilitated by public money, provide a compelling case for the Treasury to intervene.

However, compared to many environmental organisations, who offer strong critiques but rarely provide viable solutions, WDM, People and Planet and PLATFORM are working within the constraints of a market economy; the recommendations we have put forward, which propose mandatory environmental assessments on all RBS investments, are based on the realities that we are approaching peak-oil and that governments will very soon have to commit to more serious emission cuts.

We propose that RBS could use these changes to market their green investments and improve their reputation, thus attracting new customers, and contributing to a more environmentally stable planet. Our report offers evidence that renewable energy investment can be economically beneficial, using more sustainable banks such as the Co-operative Bank and Troidos Bank as examples.

Unfortunately, despite the evidence laid out in the report, Judge Philip Sales did not decide in our favour. He stated that the complaints over the unfulfilled ‘Green Book’ regulations were erroneous, since the criteria is open to interpretation. Furthermore, in reaction to our demand for the compulsory environmental assessment of investments he said such activities would “handicap” the sector.

We believe, however, that our case for RBS to change from the ‘Oil and Gas’ Bank to the ‘Royal Bank of Sustainability’ could be just and beneficial for all involved and we have therefore decided to appeal this decision. An appeal date is not yet set but is likely to take place within the next two months.

Saoirse Fitzpatrick works in the Campaigns and Networks department of WDM. You can keep up to date with the case at www.wdm.org.uk.

RBS went on a demented rampage of purchasing over the previous decade, bagging larger banks like Natwest, ones they couldn’t afford like ABN Amro, and ones with their toe in the US subprime market like Citizens, plus all sorts of smaller assets like insurance companies. Their unique combination of a vulnerable customer base and an overextended debt position meant that the bank felt the crisis more than most – now their empire is being broken up the European Union, eager to get the banking sector back to its private ways.

Advisors for RBS were telling them a fortnight ago to get rid of the insurance businesses (Privilege, Churchill, Green Flag, NIG and Direct Line) to placate the EU – now it’s looking more like they’re getting prised out of RBS’s reluctant fingers. After all, it looks like Lloyds is managing not to lose any of its assets, instead planning the largest rights issue in history to generate quick liquid funds as payback. RBS must have been hoping to remain equally unmolested; they had managed to hang onto the insurance businesses earlier this year, reversing the selloff desperately initiated by Fred Goodwin at the heart of the crisis. But the EU is playing hardball, and as well as the insurance businesses, they could lose Citizens, hundreds of branches, and see their investment banking operations scaled back. After the orgy of expansion, the party is well and truly over. 

Stephen Hester, RBS’s biggest cheese, is especially unhappy about potentially losing Citizens, saying that it’s a crucial part of RBS’s plan for emerging from the mire – with its 1500 branches, it’s a pretty sizeable cash generator, and the likelihood of getting a decent price for it is fairly low given the pressure on them to sell and the still relatively depressed marketplace. It of course would also sever RBS’s transatlantic ties, and severely set back their expansion.

So how will the high street change after all these sell-offs? Alastair Darling is keen to inject some more competition into the banking sector (we’ve already seen the potential suitors lining up for Northern Rock), and so we’ll see some brand new names on the high street pretty soon. Northern Rock’s quality assets will be parlayed into the astoundingly generic “BankCo”, while RBS’s branches will be taken over by the rakish and dashing “Williams and Glyn’s”, a venerable brand sucked into RBS in the mid-80s. The Sunday Telegraph, who reported these new banks, also said there’ll be one called “The TSB”, which truly is the brand that refuses to die.

A statement released by RBS today says that there should be an announcement before Friday on exactly which bits they’re going to lose. The adverse reaction on the stock and currency markets seems to endorse the fact that this is the sound of a bubble bursting.

Photo: Heart of Oak

First of all, UKFI’s people are doing it for the love – they must be the worst-paid fund managers in London. Senior teachers make more than these guys. John Kingman takes home £143,000 for heading the company, but the others, including the ironically-named Lucinda Riches, make either nothing or no more than £40,000. There’s a Remuneration Committee that sorts out the pay for these people, presumably with a big flashing Powerpoint slide reading “REMEMBER FRED GOODWIN” playing throughout. Mind you, they have all worked for the likes of Credit Suisse, PWC and Merrill Lynch, so they’re not exactly going to be getting the bus home.

As well as reminding everyone that they’re NOT involved in the day-to-day running of the banks, and that they’re not going to “discourage them from operating efficiently” (good call), they’re outlining how they’re planning on easing the banks back into private profitability. They’re going to be prodding RBS along with their retreat from overextended global megabank status, nurturing a “broad group of investors who are comfortable with the direction that the banks are taking, and who are willing to step into our shoes over time”, and are basically going to be in this for the long haul. They maintain that even if share prices go up, and remain robust, they’re going to wait for the economy to catch up before selling off their assets. And they’ve got a long way to go – take a look at this most depressing of tables:

So losses have decreased by over £7bn in five months, which is encouraging, but they’re still £10.9bn. It’ll be a long time before the government can reasonably frame a selloff as being profitable and defensible in a resurgent economy.

Their plan is to avoid big headline-grabbing selloffs, and instead play it slow – they suggest that a series of small sales, that don’t distort the market either before or after a sale, and that incrementally build confidence, are the way forward. They’re also planning to use a variety of different types of selloff – as well as traditional placements, they might deploy exchangeable debt issues, where a “sale” is made now at an agreed price, with the shares actually being sold at later date as long as that price is met or exceeded.

They’re also keen to show that, along with the rest of the Treasury and its attendent bickering sisters, they’re dedicated to reforming compensation, risk management, and executive appointments. The FT reports that thanks to the outcry over Stephen Hester’s bonus at RBS, more conditions are to be placed on him receiving the cash. He’ll have to wait five years rather than three to get it, and he would have to hit new profitability targets.

So we just have to sit tight and hope that the massive and unpredictable asset pools of Lloyds and RBS continue to provide returns, and that the confidence of the banking sector as a whole remains high(ish). The government is going to wait until the economy is healthier before selling off its bank assets, and the economy is only going to get healthier if banks continue to provide credit; an upswing in the banks’ fortunes could yet be undercut by wider problems in the economy like unemployment, and wider problems in the economy could yet be created by a fresh loss of confidence in the banking sector. For those reasons the government may end up being in the position of having to stay in the casino even when they’re sitting on a lot of winnings – taxpayers are going to have to be patient for their returns.

Stephen Hester’s new compensation package totals nearly £10m, with salary coming to £1.2m, £2m annual non-cash bonus, and then £6.4m in long-term share options. No wonder he’s seeing green shoots! To the thousands of sacked RBS employees, it’s going to be a series of galling sums; for the rest of us, while we’re not expecting some socialistic epiphany from Hester, it would be nice to see a bit of a change in how compensation is given out.

There’s some encouraging elements to the package – no inflated salaries a la post-crisis American banking, the majority of compensation being performance-related. But isn’t this just RBS reheating their old compensation style? What was wrong with Goodwin’s compensation was that it wasn’t punitive enough on risk-taking – sure, he didn’t get a bonus in 2006 because of the over-reaching deals he made, but it wasn’t enough to dissuade him from making those deals. Hester’s compensation needs to be smaller to improve morale – his potential bonus is far more than his counterparts’ at Lloyds, which won’t impress those whose jobs are still at risk. But more importantly it needs better balance the compensation conundrum – to avoid inducing complacency through a high salary, or risk-taking through a high performance-related bonus (currently being deployed to massive effect at Goldman Sachs, though they’re mostly down to taking on profit-generating assets of smaller banks, a one-off fillip but with potentially huge ongoing results). What executive compensation needs is a way to circumvent this Scylla-Charybdis situation altogether. Answers on a postcard please.

More plainly wrong is taking out executive suites at Wimbledon when you’re majority owned by the taxpayer – this is the sort of thing you just don’t get to do for a few years guys, unless you want us all to continue hating you with a burning passion. RBS defended themselves with the usual jive about supporting “customers vital to our success” – if people refuse to do business with you until you hand them some strawberries and cream, they’re probably not worth dealing with in the first place. The only available PR manoeuvre left is to make 70% of the guests regular folk off the street, thus reflecting their debt of gratitude for all those bailouts.

Still, their image rehabilitation has been kickstarted somewhat by Fred Goodwin handing back millions in pension money last week, admittedly about three months too late for it to have any real effect on his reputation, the bank’s brand, or the public’s satisfaction…

Another classic example is Schaeffler, the ball bearings company who made Stretch Armstrong look positively stunted with their takeover of tyre manufacturers Continental last year. Needless to say, the debt mountain they took on to fund it didn’t get any smaller when the recession hit. Schaeffler’s stake has lost €8bn in value since the buyout began.

We’ve already seen how Maria Schaeffler, the owner of the company, turned to the German government for a bailout and got denied; she then had to deal with the ignominy of having her company accused of using the hair of Auschwitz victims to make textiles. Not now you understand, but back during the war – still not fantastic PR either way. Her recent appearance at a ski resort wearing the plushest fur imaginable didn’t go down too well either when she’s meant to be playing the role of the prudent CEO.

Now the debt-for-equity swap that banks were pressing for is starting to get hashed out, but it’s not looking quite as bad as first indicated for Schaeffler, when Maria was set to hold onto just 20%. Continental are set to regain operational control of the whole company, turning the original deal on its head. The FT’s sources say that Schaeffler is still set to retain its 90% stake in the company though, but that it might well have to give some of that up in order to fund a capital injection. So maybe not the worst case scenario for Maria, but the shame at rescinding control of your company to the one you bought out just 9 months ago must be pretty hard to bear. And the fact that the banks don’t want the equity isn’t really a ringing endorsement.

Of course, instead of buying out someone who’s much bigger than you, it’s a better idea to hang on to your cash and wait for a recession when all your rivals start dropping like flies. Then schmooze the PM of your country over cocktails, get him to waive some competition rules, and bingo! You’ve got more assets than you can shake a stick at, and for knockdown prices!

Goodwin should feel right at home, surrounded as he is by other celebs who have done well out of their home countries before fleeing to avoid giving back large sections of their wealth. It’s like a little F1 tax-dodging paddock has set up in the village, with Fernando Alonso, Lewis Hamilton, Michael Schumacher and Alain Prost joining Stewart in choosing the Lake Geneva shore for their home, all presumably playing boules together and laughing at the saps who actually contribute to their respective European societies.

Stewart owes Goodwin, as he gets paid £1m a year by the bank for being a brand ambassador, which involves wearing RBS-emblazoned shirts to persuade impressionable aging F1 fans that investing in the bank is a good idea. Other ambassadors include Sachin Tendulkar, Andy Murray and Zara Phillips. Stewart was trumpeting Goodwin over the weekend in the Express, saying that he just made a mistake: “At the end of 2007, Sir Fred was applauded as the best banker in the world and the company made £11billion profit. Suddenly, he is the worst banker in the world. It is nonsense.” Thanks for those pearls, Jackie – do you know what “over-leveraged” means?

The anti-RBS anger is still flowing like the hate in Star Wars – the Daily Record is mad that former RBS director Mark Fisher has managed to pay off his mortgage, while the Scotsman is getting impatient that it’ll take years to potentially nab Fred for breaking financial regulations. Philip Hampton, the new chairman, has asked for an end to the “public flogging” of the bank, but it doesn’t look like the public’s bloodlust has been sated yet. To be fair, Hampton’s got a point – if this drags on and on, RBS’s name could get irrevocably mud-spattered, and harm the British financial services industry all for the sake of people wanting to chuck things at Fred. Can someone get that picture of him snorting coke off Nicole Scherzinger while Lewis looks on impotently, and satisfy the public once and for all?

The protests form a four-pronged descent upon the Bank of England, with one themed around climate change, one against the war(s), one against land enclosures, and one against “financial crimes” – we naturally chose to follow the latter. It starts at London Bridge and is led by Chris “turn the Bank of England into a brothel” Knight, looking a bit like that Nazi from Indiana Jones who gets his hand burned. It’s all a bit weak to begin with, but once a brass band complete with sousaphone start parping, the crowd snowballs as it makes its way across the bridge.

There’s a papier mache Fred Goodwin effigy with a photocopied face stretched around in an eerie rictus; a mannequin with “Eat The Bankers” across it (what happened to “Burn The Bankers”?); and placards with various legends including ”make love not leverage” and ”coked up and cooking the books”. Traffic grinds to a halt, and one taxi held up by the parade contains a man in a suit. The photographers quickly gather round to capture the heavy symbolism, but the crowd don’t really care – there’s no setting it on fire or even mild intimidation. High up above Monument a crowd of businesspeople look down on the underlings from their high castle, hands sassily on hips. “I’m not invisible any more”, gushes one plummy student. “Our generation is doing something”.

As we meander towards the Bank of England, the crowd’s got pretty big, and very vocal – the cheers that flow through the throng get cacophonous as we reach the Bank, where the four horses converge on the steps, creating a large and amorphous whole. Flares get popped by the anti-war end, prompting some mild police interference and lots of booing. The band plays on, for a fashion. Some guys get a megaphone out, but it’s too quiet and all we hear is some guff about “localised economies”. There seem to be more photographers than protestors, arguably augmenting the power of the protest by plastering it across the world’s media, but the feeling while you’re actually there is of a sterile, mediatised photo-op. We can’t get to the RBS branch that’s getting looted. We get bored and go for lunch.

It’s certainly not easy to have a march about the financial crisis. The opacity and intricacy of the system benefits it, as there’s nothing to rally around and fight against; there’s no banners urging a more stringent FSA. Sure, there’s the anti-banker rhetoric (though would the average anarchist be able to say what a “banker” even does?), but they’re small fry compared with the systemic errors perpetuated by an entire industry over years that have led us here. So the protests inevitably miss the mark, quite apart from the fact that anarchists and anti-capitalists don’t have any solutions of their own for sustainable wealth creation.

But it’s badly organised too. The four horsemen look great, but doom the march to failure – as they converge, the protest dissolves into a cacophony of different causes. “One currency, one country, one world” reads one banner; “No to world government” reads another. “Jacqui Smith: Zionist puppet” sits next to anti-nuclear slogans. ”People united will never be defeated” goes one chant – but united against what? The cheering must certainly be cathartic, but crucially it’s wordless.

Getting out of this ideological black hole proves tricky. A police wall stops us, so I explain I’ve got some work to do. ”Er…search his bags” is the kneejerk response; I blag my way out with a notebook and press credentials. But if I had something untoward on me, wouldn’t they have wanted me to take it out of the protest?

With their modular surveillance cameras, riot gear and wonky logic, the police make it harder on themselves than it should be. If they just rocked up in great numbers, and stayed immobile but allowed people out, the echo chamber they surrounded would soon have starved itself of oxygen; no-one really seemed to know what to do once they arrived at the Bank. As it was, our editor Dan was stuck in there for hours as the mood turned ugly and the police dogs came out. He might still be there for all we know. Good luck buddy!

So wha’ gwarn? Lloyds had a busy weekend, signing up to the government’s insurance scheme that Darling set up back in January, which has the government take on banks’ “troubled assets” (still loving that bit of euphemistic psychological terminology). Lloyds needed to do this because of the massive amounts of these assets held by HBOS, whom it bought out last year. So under the scheme, Lloyds pays the government a £15.2bn insurance premium to have it insure its £260bn of potentially bad assets – things like defaulted mortgages – so that if they do turn out to be bad, the government will absorb the losses (after the first £25bn of losses is taken on by Lloyds themselves). The hope is that the confidence given to them by not having to worry about these assets will improve its health – it’ll start lending again (it’s promised £28bn over the next few years), the economy will pick up, not as many of the assets will turn bad, and the ol’ capitalist machine will whirr with renewed vigour. 

Well, let’s hope so, because if it doesn’t then the taxpayer is shouldering the burden. And Gordon Brown must be hoping so too, as the political mileage gained by his rivals will be enough to sink him if it doesn’t work out. Brown allowed the takeover of HBOS by Lloyds last year to pass unheeded by competition rules, and with five times less due diligence – this will come to be seen as rash and clumsy if it doesn’t work out. Michael Fallon, the Tory chairman of the Treasury sub-committee has already waded in, calling the soiree where chairman Sir Victor Blank persuaded Brown to waive the rules “the most expensive cocktail party in history”, adding: “Brown should never have egged Victor Blank on by offering to waive the competition rules. The law is there for a good reason”. Expect a lot more of this in the next few days.

But while we should wait until we actually take on assets before we get angry with them (though The Times isn’t bothering), shareholders are already mad at Blank and chief exec Eric “Fat Dr. No” Daniels. Considering 83% of the assets insured by the government came from HBOS, shareholders can’t believe that their investment has been dragged down by Lloyds chasing cheap acquisitions. The deal cut by Lloyds is less favourable than the insurance package for RBS, who paid £6.5bn to the government for insuring against £325bn of its assets. Daniels can’t seem to please anyone, having “pissed the Treasury off” during the hashing out of the deal, according to a source quoted by the FT. Still, they’ve both got Brown’s support, who said: “When we rescued RBS last year, we removed the chief executive and chairman. That is not happening at Lloyds”.

Elsewhere, the papers are gamely encouraging us to get all riled up at the news that 40,000 junior Lloyds employees are still set to get bonuses of around £1000 each, not really the story that “Lloyds bankers in line for £80m bonuses” promises. Don’t worry – Daniels et al are still not getting any bonus action this year (though Daniels is getting a £3m pension).

So while the shareholder revolt foments, hopefully resulting in the trashing of Blank’s pathetic attempt at a car and fresh tears from Daniels, another one is brewing over at Barclays. Despite them taking on tons of Middle Eastern investment to avoid a government bailout, they might need to sign up to the insurance scheme anyway. Alastair “Don” Darling is clearly making everyone offers they can’t refuse – fingers crossed it all works out.

Ramsay’s accounts were filed eight months late, suggesting that there’s some kind of ongoing wrangling with their creditors. They dodged a bullet by refinancing a loan from Icelandic bank Kaupthing back in May before the crisis hit, going through RBS to get an overdraft and loan facility worth £10.5m. Now the notes to their late filing show they’re having some secret cosy chats about the loan – though they’re not giving details, it could be that they’ve missed the first payment, or are still discussing terms of the loan itself. But they’re insisting that they’re financially A-OK, and the “should be able to operate within the level of its current facility”.

The statements make it look like Ramsay’s assets are in a strong position – pre-tax profit was up from £816,000 the year before to £3.05m in the annual period up to August 2007. Yeah, well, Damian Hirst was selling diamond encrusted skulls in the same period – the world was still wadded back then, but not so much anymore. His current ongoing wranglings show that the only kitchen nightmare Gordon’s having is in his own! Eh? Eh?

His week has also been tainted by the news that he may never have played for Rangers’ first team after all; or in the words of Fox News, “Gordon Ramsay’s Soccer Career Is a Bunch of Baloney, Report Says”. Ramsay, who is always attempting to chalk up man-points by playing in celebrity footy matches and “casually” mentioning his sporting past, said that he played three first team matches for the club, but actually it looks like he just did a mediocre job in a testimonial match, and that’s about it. ”Any inaccuracies regarding the details of this period can be explained by the fact that all this occurred nearly 25 years ago”, said Ramsay – come on, I think if you’d be groomed as a schoolboy for Rangers stardom, you might just remember whether you actually played for them in proper matches or not.

Still, good on Gordon for showing the world that we don’t just eat tripe slathered in some thick generic sauce – he’s bagged another two Michelin stars for his first French restaurant, bringing his total to 12. Predictably, the French critics have been sniffy, with Jean-Claude Ribaut at Le Monde merely describing him as “very media-friendly” rather than comment on his food. Francois Simon of Le Figaro deployed a bewildering barrage of damning with faint praise, saying the two stars ”place the stereotypical cooking of a knowledgable Briton – not bad, but old hat – on a par with the dishes of auteurs such as Jean-Luc Rabanel at Arles”; Simon has previously described Ramsey’s offerings as “Xerox food”. You got served!

And I don’t envy Ramsay the experience of having his father-in-law as co-director of his company – bet that was fun after the adultery came to light…

HSBC’s rights issue is a process of generating more capital through the sale of shares – it wants to maintain its position as having a high level of capital, a position compromised by their contracting profits (down 62% for the last quarter) and the fact that bailed-out banks have had their capital levels boosted by governments.

They’re also planning to scale back their US consumer operation that has been nothing but trouble since they bought it back in 2003 off Household International Inc. – they’ve ended up with a company whose escalating losses are cancelling out profits over HSBC’s tenure, and which HSBC is also having to pour money into in the form of goodwill payments. 6100 jobs are going thanks to the bank winding down to just a credit-card business. Stephen Green, HSBC chairman, said: “With the benefit of hindsight, this is an acquisition we wish we had not undertaken”, somewhat different from what CEO Michael Geoghegan said about the subprime adventure in August (!) last year: “Sub-prime business is a growth business overall. I’m sure that, when all this settles down, you’ll come back and you’ll look at banking in the United States and see traditional banking is growing at X but sub-prime is growing at 2X”. 

And he’s going to be eating those words off some IKEA kitchenware, as he’s not going to be getting a bonus this year; cutting thousands of jobs and still getting a bonus, especially alongside the Goodwin furore, would need some cosmically powerful explanation. The announcement was full of contrition and Select Committee-style apologies: “The industry needs to recover a sense of what is right and suitable as a key impulse for doing business…we strongly believe that the industry must respond to the requirement for a more sober and reasonable approach to compensation…It is clear that the banking industry got it wrong in the go-go years”. Ah yes, those years when the banking industry danced on podiums in cheap lingerie.

HSBC’s troubles have been offset by growth in new markets, including a whopping 64% profit increase in China. But as MarketWatch notes, if the Dubai dream ends up dying, and China’s growth slows down, HSBC could start to feel the burn in those areas too. There’s banter about HSBC using its bolstered capital to fund an acquisition of some sort, but maybe they should hang onto that comfy 10% capital ratio for a rainy day.

Their Chief Economist, Stephen King, certainly doesn’t see a glowing global picture, envisaging in the Independent today a Marxist future where we all get into our protectionist trenches and start tilling the land for the common national good: “We’ve lived through decades of plenty, where incomes have risen rapidly, where credit has been all too easily available and where recessions have been mostly modest affairs. Suddenly, we’re facing a collapse in activity on a truly Marxist scale. It’s difficult to imagine the world’s love affair with free markets being sustained under this onslaught…We may avoid a 1930s Depression but, increasingly, we may find the best we can hope for is a 1990s Japan.” Expect freaky Aum-esque cults and a Super Famicom revival soon.

Sarkozy announced on Monday plans to give French car manufacturers €6bn in low-interest loans, as well as money for parts manufacturers. He’s hoping the move will keep Renault et al manufacturing in France amid the recession rather  than heading somewhere cheaper (Italy looks like it may follow his lead). Now questions are being raised over the legality of this generosity – as an EU member, France shouldn’t be allowed to favour domestic companies financially. Germany’s already unhappy about it, as are the Czech Republic.

The beef happens at a time when protectionism is being championed by indigenous workers and condemned by their politicians. Barack Obama has felt the full force of American industry lobbyists recently on the issue, with the steel industry clobbering the Democrats into putting a “Buy American” clause in Geithner’s new financial rescue plan; they’re still discussing how strong the clause will be, though Obama recognises the weaknesses involved. Canada’s lobbyists have done a copycat version of this clause called, yes, “Buy Canadian”. Meanwhile in the UK, the wildcat strikes over foreign workers prompted Mandy to assertthat UK business was opposed to protectionism, asserting the right for all EU citizens to work across Europe.

Protectionism amid a financial crisis is like going back to your ex at Valentine’s – you know you shouldn’t, and as a long-term plan it probably won’t work out, but right now it feels so good. You suddenly see money that was disappearing overseas suddenly flowing round the country, but as foreign traders start to stay away, dissuaded by your high tariffs, the economy begins to stagnate, ongoing job creation falls, and suddenly you’re watching DVDs from opposite ends of the sofa and not talking in restaurants, to clumsily round off the metaphor.

The World Trade Organisation has warned America against a protectionist plan; poor countries stand to lose the most from protectionism, as multinationals stay away and the exports many are dependent on dry up. And as well as protectionism of commodities and resources, the European Commission is warning against the protection of financial markets – if each European country creates their own bad bank for toxic assets, the likelihood of those being traded across borders is next to nil, and will lead to lower flexibility and willingness to start credit lending. But nevertheless, RBS is already pulling back from overseas, where 41% of its current lending lies.

So it doesn’t look like the strikers and lobbyists are going to get their way, and that anti-protectionism is pretty set in stone across governments and markets. Still, it would be a bold company that steps above the parapet and says that it’s off to Eastern Europe for the cheap labour, sod the lot of you. And with people like Paul Krugman espousing a new model of protectionism as a second-best solution that at least keeps people employed the world over, we can expect more near-protectionist suggestions to emerge as the recession deepens.