David Blackburn

The Today programme really let Paul Myners off the hook this morning. The interviewer obsessed with why the loans had remained secret for so long. It’s a fair question, and it seems bizarre that we only learn of them ten months after the borrowing was repaid in full. However, there are more important questions. As I wrote yesterday, these disclosure’s most potentially volatile revelation is that Gordon Brown was propping up HBOS whilst urging Lloyds to purchase the ailing giant. Was this issue examined in any depth? No, though it must be determined whether the Lloyds’ board understood HBOS’s predicament in its horrific entirety. The equally crucial question of how the government is addressing the banking system’s continued frailties received scant attention.

The two top dogs at the Treasury Select Committee, John McFall and Michael Fallon, give remarkably different reactions to the news that ministers withheld details of emergency loans to RBS and Lloyds for over a year. McFall argues that secrecy was necessary to avoid a run on the banks; Fallon expresses outrage that Lloyds’ shareholders were not privy to all information when considering the disastrous purchase of HBOS, urged on them by the Prime Minister.   Both have their points. Blind panic is the defining recollection of those autumnal days. If the situation had been exacerbated by full disclosure of the mess RBS and Lloyds were in then God alone knows what pandemonium would have ensued.

I laughed more at the Antiques Roadshow than I did at The Thick of It. In fact, finding the louche Eric Knowles delivers more cutting gags per minute than Malcolm Tucker has become a feature of my weekends. And it’s a sad one because The Thick of It was the sharpest and most savage programme on television - a welcome focus for one’s anger at the Labour government. Truth is, Armando Iannucci’s show has dated. The outwardly crisp style of government it satirised has descended into a very public ‘omnishambles’. The reality is funnier than the fiction.

The success or failure of Cameron’s EU policy rests in part on the promised British Bill of Rights. What is clear is that Tories are unclear what should be included in it. One question that is yet to be answered is whether aspects of the constitution should be entrenched? Writing on the Blue Blog today, Michael Howard writes: 'Any decision about these rights requires a balancing of competing rights. The fundamental question is who should be responsible for striking that balance: elected MP’s or unelected judges? On terrorism, Parliament twice, after great debate, reached its view. Yet twice the judges have held that Parliament got it wrong.

Michael Portillo believes that a future Tory government, like those that came before it, will not succeed in cutting public spending. I agree with Pete: public finances are so parlous that cuts have to be made. Demolishing the state is not an overnight job; it will take time and cost money, and so it should because the stakes are too high for a quick fix, cowboy politics solution. But, immediate savings are to be made through efficiencies. ‘Efficiency savings’ are derided as being insubstantial. Such an analysis is simplistic. Endemic waste is perpetuated by irrational systems. The Department for Work and Pensions runs an administrative budget of £2.7bn.

It looks like curtains for ‘President’ Blair. Every commentator besides Adam Boulton and James MacIntyre, who is possessed of a ruinous gambling streak, have now virtually written off the former PM. Blair has an uncanny knack of winning through against the odds, so I will not call time on his chances quite yet. But with Merkel and Sarkozy united against him, the fat lady is warming up for the main event with a few scales and arpeggios. Where would failure leave Blair with regard to Labour and the election?