Unprecedented, extraordinary, global – and principally the fault of a banking industry “storing up risks for the future”. Alistair Darling tried hard last night to deflect the blame from his immediate predecessor for scrapping the rules on which Gordon Brown once rested the government’s economic credibility.

The chancellor emphasised in his Mais lecture the need to adapt policies to deal with the recession, rather than the impact of existing policies on the state of the public finances.