The narrative would run something like this: Britain is country where for years smash and grab activities by banks and bankers have been tolerated, politicians have committed expenses fraud with impunity and where both politicians and the police have been in the pockets of the right wing media, where a credit orgy for the middle classes led to a credit crunch that has put thousands of working class people out of work, and where an unelected government intends to pay for the bail out of the very same financial system by cutting benefits and services to the most vulnerable, justifying its agenda with spin about a ‘big society’ that can only ever exist in communities that least need it.

When the culture of ‘Smash and Grab Britain’ hits the streets, should we be surprised?

Claire Leigh is Treasurer of the Young Fabians.

Firstly, why are we so concerned about retaining the parts of the financial services sector whose reckless practices resulted in one of the worst contractions in UK economic output in history?

On the one hand bankers are vilified for their part in the recession and the attendant increases in unemployment and reductions in tax revenues; on the other we are reticent to do much about them for fear of losing jobs and tax revenues.

Secondly, why are politicians of all colours at pains to ensure that interest rates remain low primarily to ensure that houses (by which, strictly speaking, they mean mortgage debt) remain affordable when overleveraging of households both contributed to and compounded the effects of the financial crisis?*

On the one hand we are concerned by over-indebtedness of households; on the other we want household debt to be affordable.

I suppose you could argue these are consistent positions to hold by appealing to practical issues of addressing the issues in the short term.

While parts of the financial services sector contributed to the global financial crisis, it is difficult for the UK to wean itself of them in the short term – how would you replace foregone tax revenues? If this isn’t possible, would it result in steeper and faster fiscal contraction? Would this make recessionary pressures worse?

As for household debt, it’s reasonable to have a short-term concern about the potential impact of rapid household de-leveraging: the potential for a vicious downward spiral of consumer expenditure. (See The Economist this week on the related issue of interest rates).

And yet. And yet.

Arguments about the forgone taxes bank relocations would cause seem overblown to me. A Reuters special report argues that it would be harder for banks to relocate than they would have you believe.

And I sense politicians – like most of the country – have an irrational love of home-ownership; affordable mortgages are at least as desirable as a means of allowing first-time buyers onto the housing market, or existing home-owners to trade up, as they are of reducing recessionary pressures.

If we prioritise short term imperatives over longer term considerations, then we are unlikely to find much reason to change at all.

Alex Baker is Secretary of the Young Fabians.

* A related issue is supply of new homes – other things equal, home ownership would be more affordable if the government built more houses. If that’s the policy goal, then you’ve got to ask why successive governments have shied away from building more homes.

Actually, the gas and electricity regulator’s Project Discovery is clear that such an option is the most radical of the potential reforms it suggests.  The Guardian reports that the carbon tax that Ofgem advocates as an incentive for the big energy suppliers to build new, more environmentally friendly, power stations, may appear in the pre-election Budget.  

We often hear of being taken to the brink of a shutdown – particularly during harsh winters – but what if the lights did go out?

Well, for one, I’m pretty sure the public reaction to the energy companies would rival that which Britain’s bankers have experienced in the last 18 months. Profits would be highlighted, bonuses lambasted, and the limits of regulation put under scrutiny. Nationalisation would likely be back on the agenda. But hopefully Britain’s commercial gas and electricity suppliers don’t see their business models as being in a similar vein to high street banks.

The view that the basic product they offer – the power we need to live our lives, both in business and in leisure - is so essential to everyday life that they can ride the storm is dangerous for us. Yet this is exactly what the banking world has succeeded in doing. You can’t immediately boycott your gas and electricity supplier the day after their sailing close to critical levels of supply has backfired.  So can they be relied upon to do the right thing?

It’s one to watch – but what is certain is the protests and hatred that would ensue. Not least because without electricity, 21st century Britain wouldn’t know what else to do other than take to the streets.