John McDonnell lands a blow on our chancer of the exchequer

George Osborne's kowtowing to China has landed him on weak ground when it comes to opposing Jeremy Corbyn's rail policy

While the Conservatives and many members of the media go on and on about the putative need for Labour to apologise for the deficit that was caused not by Gordon Brown but by the banking crisis, an apology has come from an unexpected quarter.

In a recent interview with Margaret Thatcher's biographer, Charles Moore, for the Policy Institute at King's College, London, the man who ran Thatcher's press office for 11 years, my old friend Sir Bernard Ingham, said about Thatcherism: "I'm sorry, desperately sorry, that so many people had to suffer the consequences." Now, it is true that this admission was made in the context of Ingham's claim that those years he worked for her "produced very substantial improvement in the country" - a debatable point - but it is interesting that he made the apology. He also had the good grace to add: "I wish some privatisation had been carried out better [sic]." I'll say!