Business has no confidence in govt
By politics.co.uk staff
Business leaders gave an overwhelming vote of no-confidence in the prime minister, the chancellor and the Bank of England today.
More than four fifths of those polled also called for a ban on bonuses for banks boosted by government bailouts.
The ComRes poll, conducted for the Independent, also found a minority felt they were seeing the first signs of economic recovery. A substantial majority, 71 percent, said they could see no evidence of any economic “green shoots”.
The government’s loan guarantee scheme, designed to stimulate lending by banks, came in for particular criticism with just two percent believing it had succeeded while more than three quarters said it had failed in its task.
And almost two thirds, 65 percent, agreed it was a mistake for the government to encourage the Lloyds to purchase HBOS.
The Bank of England was seen as one of the main culprits in the failure to stimulate our wavering economy.
More than half, 57 percent, said their plan to print more money would fail. When asked if the bank’s response had been “prompt and effective” only one in ten agreed, while 70 percent disagreed.
“It’s hard to remember, let alone to distinguish between, the welter of initiatives that the government has launched in the past couple of months,” said director general of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), Richard Lambert.
“The government appears to have been fighting a series of forest fires rather than building a platform for economic recovery.
“There’s little sense of a coherent strategy about what’s happened to date.”
He said the government’s major initiatives were not coming to the fore as they were bogged down in a “thicket of much less ambitious announcements”.
