Master's Thesis from the year 2013 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Region: Western Europe, grade: 2,0, University of Twente (School of Management and Governance), language: English, abstract: The United Kingdom has been at the epicentre of the global financial crisis erupting in 2007. The City of London's global interconnectedness as well as the long-established culture of regulatory self-independence triggered a near meltdown in the British banking system. Next to the immediate consequences for the British economy as a whole, the financial crisis led to a fundamental change of direction in national economic policies and destabilized a system of politics that had governed financial regulation in the UK for over two decades. The Thatcher administration had replaced the decaying manufacturing industry with a finance-led service sector and hence made the City of London the centrepiece of a self-ruling world based on the principles of privatisation and deregulation. The banking crash in September 2007, however, destroyed the illusion that an economic system which relied on light-touch financial regulation to promote the international competitiveness of the City was competent at the job of securing financial stability. The scale and prolonged effects of the financial crisis provided the central backdrop to the general election in May 2010. The financial crisis spurred ad-hoc policy responses around the globe and energized efforts to strengthen financial ...