At the beginning of 2011 Bob Diamond, the newly appointed CEO of Barclays Bank, famously remarked to a UK Treasury  Select Committee that it was time for people to get over it, that the “period for remorse and apology for banks…. needs to be over.”

In this, the first Today Business Lecture, he wanted to convince his audience that “we get it”:

“What is important is to learn from what went wrong.  In very simple terms, it’s important to demonstrate that we get it.”

This had some commentators rolling over themselves to accuse Bob Diamond of a “remarkable U-turn”.

Except it wasn’t.

The clue to this speech came from the set up. Mr Diamond told us he was going to speak about rebuilding citizenship and trust in banks. And to do this he said he was going to talk about three things (the classic three part, or tricolon, rhetorical structure).

“First, we have to build a better understanding of how businesses and banks work together to generate economic growth; second, we have to accept responsibility for what has gone wrong; finally, most importantly, we have to use the lessons learned to become better and more effective citizens.”

The evidence that speech was built on this three part structure was reinforced at the end when he said:

“I’ve talked this evening about three things that can help to restore trust:

Building a better understanding of how businesses and banks work together to generate economic growth; accepting responsibility for what has gone wrong; and using the lessons learned to become better citizens.”

There it is in clear terms – ‘these are three things I have talked about’. It’s a classic rhetorical trick to make the audience believe you have covered certain topics.

But if one looks at what he said about the all important second topic on his list – “accepting responsibility” – this is what he actually said:

“The second thing we have to do to restore trust is to accept responsibility for what went wrong.

A lot has been written about the causes of the crisis, there have been many thoughtful contributions to help us understand what happened and I could not do justice to the topic in the time I have today, so I’m not going to dwell on this”

He covers his entire second point in one elliptical sentence – that ends with “I’m not going to dwell on this”. Too right.

In this speech Mr Diamond did not in fact talk about accepting responsibility for what went wrong – at all – even though he claimed he did.

Get it?

To read the full text of Bob Diamond’s lecture click VoiceGig

Tags: Banking, Banks, Citizenship, Crisis