He must regret having given birth to this whole mess in the first place. “As Chief Secretary, you see, I was having a terrible time doing what I didn’t go into politics to do – cutting public expenditure,” he replies almost apologetically. “And I was having meetings with every departmental minister about their budget. They all wanted more money - Tony Benn and Barbara Castle more than most. I decided that I could get rid of at least three cabinet ministers – the secretaries of state for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – if I could settle on a formula for their budgets. So I set up this method for allocating public expenditure that the cabinet then agreed to. I never called it a formula. That only came later when Margaret Thatcher and John Major carried on with it.” (As did Tony Blair and Gordon Brown).