IT was difficult to shake off a feeling of great trepidation last week upon hearing Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s announcement – and crucially characterisation – of a major relaxation of financial sector regulations.

This includes a loosening of banking regulation put in place in the wake of the global financial crisis, which we must bear in mind was not that long ago even if we have had in between times to endure various other sapping debacles.

The sweeping nature of the impending reforms was highlighted by Mr Hunt, who seemed, to say the least, rather pleased with himself.

Broadcast coverage of the Chancellor’s latest noisy move showed pictures of the Big Bang era under 1980s Tory chancellor Nigel Lawson.

It seems the Tories remember this yuppie era very fondly, even though there are surely huge questions over where the whole Thatcherite focus on the City and financial services took the country in the years immediately following the Big Bang and over the longer term.

Conservative stalwarts, when they think of the Thatcher era, might remember the images of youthful City workers with giant mobile phones and not inconsiderable egos and self-confidence making huge amounts of money. Many others, particularly in Scotland and other parts of the UK blighted by savage and sustained deindustrialisation throughout the Thatcher period and into the early 1990s still under the Tories, will recall the miners’ strike and the wiping out of huge parts of the UK steel industry including Ravenscraig.

The 1980s Big Bang, and all that came with it, put far too many of the country’s eggs in one basket, amid a shameful dismantling of much of the UK’s formerly formidable industrial base.

Looking at the latest Tory manoeuvres on the City and financial services more generally, the measures announced by Mr Hunt appear in no small part to be about trying to make a very big song and dance indeed about post-Brexit opportunities.

And this surely looks like a particularly dangerous backdrop for sweeping reforms of financial services sector regulation.

The Tory Brexiters have been casting around desperately for years to try to find something, anything, to claim as a Brexit benefit. So we should be wary indeed that noisy banging of the Brexit drum is accompanying proclamations about loosening financial services regulation, measures which have been dubbed by the Chancellor as the “Edinburgh Reforms”.

The tone of the Treasury press release seemed rambunctious.

This December 9 release hailed “over 30 regulatory reforms to unlock investment and turbocharge growth in towns and cities across the UK”.

And it declared: “Speaking at an industry roundtable in Edinburgh today, the Chancellor will announce new plans to seize the benefits of Brexit by setting out a detailed timeline establishing the Government’s approach to repealing burdensome pieces of retained EU law.”

The Treasury release talked of a “smarter and home-grown regulatory framework for the UK”.

It all had a very populist tone. And it did not stop there.

Mr Hunt declared: “We are committed to securing the UK’s status as one of the most open, dynamic and competitive financial services hubs in the world.

“The Edinburgh Reforms seize on our Brexit freedoms to deliver an agile and home-grown regulatory regime that works in the interest of British people and our businesses.”

Look at the colourful language: “seize”, “Brexit freedoms”, “turbocharge”, and, of course, what looks like a blatantly populist tone in the reference to “the interest of British people”.

Economic Secretary to the Treasury Andrew Griffith, for his part, declared: “The UK is a financial services superpower.”

The Government announced that the ring-fencing regime, which has ensured separation of banks’ core retail services from other activities including investment banking operations, would be reformed. Ring-fencing was a key measure introduced in the wake of the global financial crisis with the aim, as the Bank of England has noted, of increasing stability of the financial system and preventing the costs of failing banks falling on taxpayers. The detail of the original measures was given much thought at the time.

The Treasury said its new plans would include “freeing retail-focused banks from the regime – easing unnecessary regulatory burdens on firms while maintaining protections for depositors”.

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And there were plenty more relaxation measures announced, in a raft of areas, including confirmation of major changes regarding the balance sheets of insurers.

The Treasury press release declared: “The Chancellor will set out plans to repeal, and replace, hundreds of pages of burdensome EU retained laws governing financial services…

“These plans [include] a commitment to make substantial legislative progress over the course of 2023 on repealing and replacing EU-era Solvency II – the rules governing insurers’ balance sheets – which is expected to unlock over £100 billion of private investment for productive assets such as UK infrastructure.”

“EU-era” is an interesting wording, and the emphasis on repealing and replacing “hundreds of pages of burdensome EU retained laws” does not in any way instil confidence about what is coming next.

Of course, regulation needs to evolve over time.

However, questions must be asked about the scale and range of the reforms unveiled last week, and the fact that they are all coming in a rush, and being accompanied by much grandstanding and banging of that Brexit drum.

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It is difficult to escape the notion that the sweeping deregulation trumpeted last week signals a failure to heed the lessons of the recent past.

There also seems to be a degree of arrogance from Conservative politicians, who appear to be indicating a view, when it comes to financial sector regulation, that they know so much more about what is necessary and what is not than their EU counterparts.

And the tone of the whole thing gives the impression that we are being told by Mr Hunt and the Conservative Government not to worry – that it will all be different this time round in terms of the regulatory relaxation.

We have heard this message in the past, in various contexts, and it has often been extremely wide of the mark, with grim consequences.

As well as setting out a raft of specific reforms, Mr Hunt appeared to ramp up the Government’s efforts to make the regulators focus on “the new secondary competitiveness objectives”.

This is perhaps the most worrying aspect of all.

Mr Hunt, the Treasury told us, had “issued new remit letters to the Financial Conduct Authority and Prudential Regulation Authority emphasising the new secondary competitiveness objectives”.

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The Treasury declared: “Regulators will have a duty to facilitate, subject to aligning with relevant international standards, the international competitiveness of the UK economy and its growth in the medium to long term.”

Regulation and the promotion of growth are things which should surely not be mixed together.

The regulators should focus on regulation, to ensure a safe, stable and fair financial system, and should be left alone by politicians to get on with this crucial task. They should most certainly not be required to facilitate the “international competitiveness” and “growth” of the UK economy, which is something, it is worth noting, that the Conservative Government has failed spectacularly to do, in large part because of its hard Brexit.