How can the public have any faith in his determination to rein in City excess when he appears to regard himself as being above the rules?

THEY just don’t get it, do they? Despite the controversy surrounding his name, the Treasury has confirmed corporate lawyer and tax avoider Charles Randell as chairman of the Financial Conduct Authority.

Clearly, a man who used a notorious tax avoidance scheme – described by an HMRC chief as a ‘scam for scumbags’ – and was forced to pay back £114,000, plus interest, should have no place as the supposed moral regulator of the City of London. While the vast majority of Britons pay

every penny they owe in tax, and while small businesses struggle under constant inquisition from the taxman, Mr Randell – along with the likes of ex-footballer Gary Lineker – shamefully sought loopholes to avoid paying their fair share.

How can the public have any faith in his determination to rein in City excess when he appears to regard himself as being above the rules? And how very cosy that the firm of headhunters which selected him as a candidate was run by another investor who used this insidious scheme.

To be fair to Chancellor Philip Hammond, he appears not to have known about this flagrant tax avoiding. But that doesn’t stop the decision being wholly wrong.

Has Whitehall learned none of the lessons from ten years ago, when the greed and incompetence of bankers triggered the great financial crash and forced a vast bailout at taxpayers’ expense?

This week Jeremy Corbyn vowed to take on ‘the power of finance’ and make the City a ‘servant’ of the wider economy, leading to fears he would destroy the City, Britain’s great wealth creator.

The appointment of Mr Randell plays into the hands of the Marxist Labour leader, who would tear the City down brick by brick.