Lots of people have been perplexed over the timing of the Bank of England’s admission that it extended £61.6bn of loans to prop-up Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS. Why was it disclosed this week?

Well, the main reason is that the terriers at the National Audit Office were about to call the Bank’s bluff by revealing the secret loan in an upcoming report. Mervyn King merely decided it would look better for the Bank to confess independently.

The Bank admits that the NAO report may have had some influence on the decision to go public. But officials insist that they had always wanted to be “transparent” — it was just an issue of timing.

They only, of course, had a year to tell everyone. It is just so difficult these days to find the right moment to release good news.

November 25, 2009 6:49pm in UK politics | Comment