All over the country, businesses live in fear of their overdrafts being cut. If they don't have short-term facilities to cover the period it takes to collect their own debts, some perfectly good businesses will go down. It's already happening. How is the PM proposing to help them? He is going into the debt markets to compete with them for the limited supply of money. Given the choice between a debtor underwritten by taxpayers, both living and yet to be born, and a regular business, which do you think the financiers will choose?

Reagan's wisdom was never more apposite.