Will the ‘value for money’ tsar really overrule Rachel Reeves?

Is there any word more laughably misapplied than ‘tsar’? We have already had an ‘antisemitism tsar’ and now we are going to have a ‘value for money’ tsar. Had you suggested to a Russian peasant that their monarch was value for money I suspect you might have ended up floating on the Neva River alongside Rasputin. Admittedly, that is not David Goldstone’s official title – we are supposed to call him Chair of the Office of Value for Money. But he does come with a CV that includes involvement in all kinds of public projects associated with tsarist excess. He was in charge of the delivery authority for the London Olympics, which came in at £9 billion, four times over-budget. He went on to head the London Legacy Development Corporation which was great value for West Ham Football Club, who wereshanded the stadium on a plate, though not so much for taxpayers, who were forced to stump up a further £190 million to convert an 80,000 seat athletics stadium into a 60,000 seat football one.