Introduction

It used to be regarded as one of the golden rules of politics that you never appoint anybody to give you independent advice if you're prime minister. The whole point of pendent reports is to give third party credibility to what you've already decided to do. So it was all those years ago that gordon brown appointed a banker called derrick wanlass to say that what the national health service needed was a whole lot more money. It turns out that dunmarket research in which they'd asked voters what type of person they would find credible arguing for an increase in taxes in order to pay for the health service. A banker, in those days before the banking crisis, someone who managed your money