Decoupling has taken on a new meaning in the UK. Lord Mandelson, the business secretary, believes the bidding process for Royal Mail has become “decoupled” from parliament’s legislative schedule. So Royal Mail’s partial privatisation will not form part of the government’s new plans for Building Britain’s Future. The irony is that better public services are central to these plans and the Royal Mail is one of those services’ biggest providers. Thinking, like economies, can decouple too.

Royal Mail is in a deepening hole. Increased competition and the recession are shrinking its business at an alarming 10 per cent rate. The group needs to modernise but lacks the money to upgrade. The reason is its back-to-front balance sheet. On the one hand, it cannot raise funds from the market – only the government, its sole shareholder. On the other, it is the company’s balance sheet, rather than the government’s, that shoulders a historic pension deficit last valued at £3.4bn. Pension costs consumed nearly all of Royal Mail’s £320m of operating profits last year.