Prime Minister Gordon Brown says he will not be diverted from making “the right long-term decisions” about Britain’s economy, even if they are “unpopular in the short term”.
The PM’s statement came as he emerged from a meeting with the heads of leading banks - in which they told him of their concerns about the crisis of confidence in the housing market, and he told them there was a choice of biscuits to go with their tea and coffee.
Mr Brown had suggested the banks might like to pass on the Bank of England’s interest rate cuts to their suffering customers. When asked how the bosses of Lloyds, HSBC, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and Nationwide responded, Mr Brown looked pained and rubbed the back of his head tenderly.
“We had an interesting discussion about the long and short term,” he said. “The banks said they’ve been around for a couple of hundred years, while I’ve been around for eleven. So in the long term things, look fine and dandy for the banks. But in the short term, I’m toast.”
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