It is hard to get away from Northampton-shire as the local government story of the week, the month, possibly the year. Given that it is the best part of 20 years since a council last issued a Section 114 notice, it could even be the story of the decade.

In many ways the response to what has happened has been dispiriting. The debate quickly became polarised between those – including the county's seven MPs – who claimed this was purely about bad decision- making in Northamptonshire and those who saw it as symptomatic of a deeper structural problem with local government funding.