Bankers

Episode three
‘The relationship between the banks and society has completely broken down,’ says the CEO of major high street name. ‘This is bad for the banks, but it’s also bad for society.’ This kind of implicit hopefulness characterises the last part of this series, suggesting as it does that despite all their malpractice, their cynicism, their contempt for their own customers, Britain’s banks will be forgiven by us, because – and I think I speak for the whole board when I say this – they are just so important.

This isn’t the most unpalatable attitude in this them-and-us financial weltanschauung – that belongs to a banker who reveals that ‘rape’ was a commonly used term to describe the way clients were treated – but it does serve to underline this depressing doc’s conclusion: because the people who perpetrated the mammoth fraud and theft that created the banking crisis have not been jailed, there’s really nothing to stop it happening again.