Last week's headlines about the burden to firms of business rate revaluation brought with it a sense of deja vu, namely the mounting unease in the late 1980s about the cost of the community charge which was replacing rates. The poll tax, was until now England's last major revamp of local government finance and its disastrous implementation helped bring down Thatcher.

We are about to embark on another huge reform of local government finance with the ending of RSG and the localisation of business rate and can only hope that some of Whitehall's mandarins, if not their ministers, can at least learn from the mistakes of the past, especially when so much of the Government's attention is on Brexit.