Yesterday's Government White Paper on Reforming_Financial_Markets probably wasn't devised with the sole purpose of capturing the imagination of media commentators. Which is just as well, because it hasn't.

 Damian Reece, in the Telegraph, is unsurprisingly scathing. "So there you have it", he writes, "...a crackdown on City pay backed up by the mighty force of an existing code of practice, no less, which won't name and shame those out of line. They're quaking over in the Square Mile." Leaving aside the Telegraph's relatively recent conversion to the advantages of tighter financial regulation, Reece is splendidly sarcastic, noting that the proposed Council for Financial Stability "will be a serious event, with minutes published...What happens after that is unclear although it definitely involves action. What that action is we'll have to wait and see...[but] you should already be feeling reassured that the failings of the tripartite system, which helped allow the credit crisis to erupt, are being well and truly sorted out."

 More seriously, Reece points out that with an election no more than 12 months away, many people were paying more attention to the Tory response, reflecting "the widespread belief in the City that these reforms will never see the light of day."

The Guardian's Nils Pratley also picks up on the electoral shadow hanging over the proposals, acknowledging that "we heard many expressions of good intentions from the chancellor yesterday: the problem lies in believing that this government, or the next, will make good on them." Pratley's fear is that the paper lacks critical detail – on capital targets banks will need to meet for example, and that "by a time these decisions are made, the zeal born of crisis will have faded."

 David Wighton, in the Times takes a slightly different approach, arguing that George Osborne's pledge to shift responsibility for supervision of the banks back to the Bank of England from the FSA is "good politics" (because it looks decisive, is easily understood, and leaves the government defending a tripartite system which has clearly failed). However, he continues, "good politics isn't the same as good regulation". Wighton agrees with Lord Turner that it doesn't much matter who does banking supervision: "what matters is giving whoever does the job the right tools and the right people." On the details of capital and liquidity, Wighton, unlike his peers, sees "little to be gained from rushing to reach definitive conclusions when most of the key issues need to be agreed at an international level". Furthermore, he adds, while it is critical that the UK leads in these discussions, "it is hardly helpful that much of our energy appears to be focused on a turf war between the Bank and the FSA. Nor does it enhance the status of one of our chief negotiators, Lord Turner, that he heads an organisation that the likely next government may send to the knacker's yard."