‘People in the City said to me, "John, if you’d come and seen us, we’d have told you that Northern Rock’s model was wonky."’ But if people knew Northern Rock’s business model was wonky, why was that not reported?’

Once again, it fell to the politician John McFall – no doubt to the vexation of the accounting profession and regulators – to point out the elephant in the room that everyone had been avoiding over the last two years.

This time, McFall was not addressing witnesses answering before the Treasury Select Committee. Instead, he was speaking to a gathering of accountants and investors, days after the Financial Services Authority and Financial Reporting Council published a damning paper at the end of June, which tore down all previous claims that auditors had not had a crisis – ironically, a claim made by former chief executive of the FRC, Paul Boyle.