Politicians should ensure that the legal framework for banks is such that bailouts do not happen and the sector does not impose costs on taxpayers. I do not support the particular Lib Dem proposals for trying to ensure this but they did, at least, argue in their manifesto that the levy would cease when banking reform had taken place. The Conservatives made no such promise and, ominously, there is no reference to a temporary levy in the coalition document.

Instead of extracting money from banks' customers we need governments — especially the US government — to stop encouraging irresponsibility by underwriting mortgages, encouraging securitisations, through weak personal bankruptcy laws, through tax systems that encourage gearing and by repeatedly bailing out failed financial institutions for political reasons. That requires real political courage to take on the vested interests: far more courage than levying another tax on the popular whipping boy of the day.