I can't say that I've noticed.
The main pressure exerted by "public opinion" was to elect Gordon Brown in the first place. He then proceeded to hand the Government's power to set interest rates to the Bank of England ! This was hailed as some sort of exciting, radical measure by the mass circulation press. In fact, by any reading of economic theory, it represented a complete surrender to ultra-monetarism. Even the Tories didn't go that far ! Rather interestingly one of the members of the Bank of England's rate-setting body is De-Anne Julius, a former CIA employee. She claims that she was always a humble number-cruncher for the firm, but since you swear an oath of lifetime loyalty, you wonder where her interests actually lie.
Once they were given these powers, the Bank kept British interest rates and hence the pound, relatively high. Manufacturing and agriculture lost out in export markets and began to demand a rate reduction. Some white-collar unions, like the Bank Employees, actually protested for this outside the Bank of England. A curious vision of pressure-group politics indeed. Was this a correct trade union position ? I think not. Ultimately, the manipulation of interest rates and competitive devaluations are measures which gain one country a temporary advantage until other countries retaliate.
The kind of regulation being proposed by Brown is entirely consistent with the privatised market-driven economy that New Labour has embraced. A collection of private interests governed by a regulatory system controlled by rich lawyers and auditors. I see nothing faintly progressive about it whatsoever. The idea that nationalisation is impossible nowadays isn't true at all. Indeed, the nationalisation of banks in the far East may be the only way for the local capitalists to keep control of their national banking systems.
New Labour won't even go this far. They are to the right of Edward Heath's Conservative government in 1970. Heath actually nationalised Rolls Royce to prevent it going to the wall. Blair in contrast has stated, in the face of redundancies in his own constituency, that market forces can't be challenged. Capital gains taxes and upper band income taxes under Blair's government are much the same as under Thatcher's. Blair and Brown aren't even reformists !
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