Gordon Brown’s suggestions of a ‘Tobin tax’ on Saturday got short shrift from Canada’s finance minister Jim Flaherty and US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

Then the International Monetary Fund’s director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said it would be unworkable.

And now City leaders and opposition politicians have waded in dismissing it as a “theoretical proposal” that would be impossible to put into effect without disastrous consequences for London.

Likelihood of that gaining momentum before the election. Nil.

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