http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/election/article-1265824/Brown-admits-I-reigned-reckless-banks.html
Brown admits mistakes: I should have reigned in the reckless banks 'I've learnt from that': Gordon Brown Gordon Brown finally took his share of the blame for the financial crisis yesterday after two years of passing the buck to the rest of the world. In a stunning volte face, the Prime Minister confessed it was a mistake to have allowed the reckless banking free-for-all that led to the worst recession in six decades. In an interview to be broadcast tonight, Mr Brown said: 'In the 1990s the banks all came to us and said: "Look, we don't want to be regulated, we want to be free of regulation". 'Everybody in the City was saying and all the complaints I was getting were: "Look you're regulating them too much". 'The truth is that globally and nationally we should have been regulating them more. So I've learnt from that. So you don't listen to the industry when they say "This is good for us".' The Prime Minister, who is known for his reluctance to apologise, has spent two years rejecting responsibility for the meltdown. And in the Commons last week he blamed subprime lending in Mississippi for triggering the banking fiasco here. Yet, in a speech in 2005, he had called for 'light touch regulation' in the City. Since the financial collapse, he has claimed that lack of global agreement had thwarted his efforts to regulate the banks. Quizzed by ITV's Tonight programme, he said: 'We are tougher on the banks and tougher on the way they behave and we can be relied on to make sure the banks act in the national interest,' he said. Mr Brown conceded that his decision to scrap the 10p tax band for the worst-off was the biggest mistake of his career - an admission he has made before. His aides insisted that the admission was not part of a coordinated bid to admit mistakes ahead of the UK's first TV election debate tomorrow. But Shadow Chancellor George Osborne said: 'So finally Gordon Brown admits he failed to regulate the bankers and increased taxes on the poor. 'His next huge mistake would be his jobs tax that will kill the recovery. We've had 13 years of his economic mistakes. Britain can't afford five years more.' Mr Brown also came close to admitting lying. Asked what the advice of his father - a former Church of Scotland minister - would be, Mr Brown said: 'Always tell the truth.' Asked if he lives up to that, the Prime Minister would only say: 'I try to.' In recent weeks Mr Brown has been forced to admit that he made false claims to the Iraq Inquiry that defence spending has always gone up in real terms under Labour. He was then censured by the Information Commissioner for distorting statistics on immigration. Mr Brown also talked about his shyness and said: 'I come from a background where we've had to fight for everything we've got. I went to an ordinary school, I worked my way up. I fought my way through.' He denied claims that he was a bully but admitted being 'very strong willed, very determined and quite impatient'. Asked what keeps him awake at night, Mr Brown said: 'I've been very worried about what's happening in Afghanistan because we've got to make very difficult decisions.' He admitted he was 'not so good' at the presentational side of politics and stressed he did not tell people what they wanted to hear.
