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Goodwin backlash: no need for Westminster lynch mob
Stripping of Goodwin's knighthood inappropriate and risks anti-business hysteria, says IoD
BOTH David Cameron and Ed Miliband have welcomed yesterday's decision to strip Fred Goodwin of his knighthood – but the backlash has already begun. Most vociferous was Simon Walker, director-general of the Institute of Directors, who warned against politicians creating "anti-business hysteria".
Walker said that while Goodwin's errors of judgment might have led to the taxpayers having to fork out £45bn to save the Royal Bank of Scotland, the bank's former CEO had not been convicted of any crime nor struck off any professional body - the normal prerequisites for losing an honour.
"To do it because... you don't approve of someone, you think they have done things that are wrong but actually there is no criminality... is inappropriate and politicises the whole honours system," he told the BBC.
Lord Digby Jones, former head of the CBI, said there was "the faint whiff of the lynch mob on the village green" about the action.
The speedy decision was taken ultimately by the Queen, who cancelled and annulled the honour on the advice of the Honours Forfeiture Committee. According to Gary Gibbon, political editor of Channel 4 News, the committee had been heavily leant on if not by David Cameron himself, then someone very close to him.
Mark Field, the Tory MP for Cities of London & Westminster, made a similar point to The Times. "I'm afraid the committee seems to have been put under pressure by top-flight politicians," he said.
Others to question the decision overnight include Alistair Darling, the former Labour Chancellor, who felt there was "something tawdry" about the singling out of Goodwin. "If it's right to annul his knighthood, what about the honours of others who were involved in RBS and HBOS?" Darling writes in The Times.
Goodwin was not allowed to appear before the Honours Forfeiture Committee, according to The Daily Telegraph, though he was invited to to explain why he should keep his knighthood. "He is understood not to have taken up the offer." He was informed of the decision in a phone call from committee chairman Sir Bob Kerslake at 3pm. ·
