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It used to be regarded as one of the golden rules of politics that you never appoint anybody

to give you independent advice if you're Prime Minister, if you don't already know what

they're going to say.

The whole point of independent reports is to give third party credibility to what you've

already decided to do.

So it was all those years ago that Gordon Brown appointed a banker called Derek Wondluss

to say that what the National Health Service needed was a whole lot more money and to say

how it should be paid for.

At the time it rather surprised me that they'd appointed Wondluss after all who was he.

It turns out that they'd done market research in which they'd asked voters what type of person

they would find credible arguing for an increase in taxes in order to pay for the health service,

a banker in those days before the banking crisis came out top.

Someone who managed your money would be credible arguing that you should give more of it to

pay for the NHS.

Why am I reminding you of this story from so long ago?

Well, what was Boris Johnson thinking when he appointed Sir Kevin Collins to be his catch-up

czar without first working out what Sir Kevin might be in favour of and working out whether

he was in favour of it too?

There were until three reasons that the Treasury said no to Sir Kevin's plans, meaning that

one minute they were discussing a 10 to 15 billion pound in Whitehall and the next they're

unveiling one worth scarcely more than a billion.

...