I don’t think there’s any person more cynical on the planet than a political spin doctor. One of their tricks is: if you know bad news is coming, get ministers to make some prior announcements on the subject to make it look as though they are doing something about it.

Sometimes it’s only when the bad news breaks that you can spot what the Government was trying to do earlier.

We’ve had a very obvious example of this in the past week. First we had David Cameron making a speech about “moral capitalism” and making a “fair and worthwhile” economy. Then we had Vince Cable talking about ways to curb executive pay. The reason for this flurry of activity suddenly became clear on Thursday – the announcement that Stephen Hester, the boss of RBS, is to get a bonus of nearly £1million on top of his annual salary of £1.2million. His bonus was described as “reasonable” and that “a million pounds isn’t very much to pay to retain him”.

RBS is, of course, a state-owned bank. Under its current boss it has made tens of thousands of people redundant. It has failed to meet Government targets on lending. Mr Hester will be paid more in 3 days than a soldier fighting in Afghanistan earns in a year.

The Government could have stopped this bonus but didn’t. Their talk of curbing executive pay and a fair capitalism is worthless. They won’t even support Labour’s plan to tax bank bonuses and use the money to guarantee jobs for 100,000 young people. The Government are completely out of touch with the country on this.