Most of us mere mortals assume our governments – central and local – and their agencies, private sector partners and regulators, entrusted with billions of pounds of our taxes to run our services, generally know what they are doing. Every now and then a catastrophe exposes that assumption of their competence as complete optimism on our part.

It happened with the fiscal crash in 2008 when we discovered that lack of regulation had caused banks to make reckless gambles and that politicians, dependent on the taxes generated by profits based on speculation, had turned a blind eye. A decade later we are still living with the consequences and virtually no one has taken any blame.