The late JK Galbraith once remarked that left-wing governments’ penchant for intervening meant that they needed to be better at management than right-wing ones. The truth is that practically the only areas the government has got half right – the economy and the railways – are the ones it has removed itself from. Everywhere else, ignoring Galbraith and its own heritage, Labour has marched management backwards.

Simon Caulkin, writing on the irony of how “an administration that sets such store by efficiency and private-sector methods should end up resembling Fawlty Towers”.