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  It is true that Gordon Brown was the latest in a long line of Chancellors to tinker with the regulatory environment of financial services with almost universally disastrous results from all of them. What the others managed to do, which GB failed to do, was to rectify (partially in most cases) the level of regulation and avert significant disaster - well except Black Wednesday of course...
  
  Absolutely banks need some degree of special regulation to control their behaviour and to ensure that they have adequate risk capital etc. but much of this is covered by international agreements such as Basel II, the currently under negotiation Basel III & Solvency II etc. Domestic regulation needs to ensure adequate segregation and ring-fencing of retail banking and commercial business lending from both traditional asset/investment management and the more speculative investment banking type operations; it is the latter that created and carried the bulk of the toxic debt in the recent crisis and almost lead to disaster for RBS amongst others. There is also a need for some form of statutory (but not necessarily state funded) guarantee/compensation system for retail and business customers in case a retail bank were to ever fail.

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