Bankers effectively sabotaged the levy on their massive bonuses by using their financial expertise to keep hold of their cash.

The former chancellor said his supertax on bank bonuses just didn’t not work because of the ‘imaginative’ tactics used by the people it was targeting. He said:

‘It will be a one-off thing because, frankly, the very people you are after here are very good at getting out of these things and… will find all sorts of imaginative ways of avoiding it in future.

‘But what I wanted to do was send a message to them that we all live in the same world together.’

Not sure they got that message.