Just now on the Daily Politics – the best of the BBC’s political output – Andrew Neil would not let Gordon’s apprentice off the hook, repeatedly asking Ed Balls why, if it was down to oil, UK inflation was higher than the rest of the Western industrialised world?

Ed tried to wriggle and in the end started grovelling to Neil, that he was probably the best informed political journalist on the economy. Classic. “Please stop beating me up” his eyes were pleading.