“Vince Cable, the Lib Dems’ Treasury spokesman, describes the latest raft of measures aimed at freeing up the supply of credit as being like ‘giving the kiss of life to a corpse’. He’s right: the British banking system is floating face down in a pool of its own illiquidity and it’s pointless us chucking it another lifeline. The problem with the Government’s bail-out last October is that while it may have stopped the patient flat-lining, it left him on taxpayers’ life support, in a persistent vegetative state.”

Read the rest of Will’s Standard column here.