World

As for the Liberal Democrats, well they have had a reasonable recession.
The acute instinct and foresight of their Treasury spokesman Vince Cable has kept them in the game, the first to warn about the dangers of excessive public and private debt, the first to urge the nationalisation of the banks.
The Lib Dems backed the stimulus but preferred green investment to the VAT cut. They also thought the banks were getting too much public money in return for too few guarantees to the taxpayer.
But a fat lot of good it did the party. Mr Cable overshadowed his leader, Nick Clegg, the party was often squeezed out of the story, and the polls stayed rigidly low.
So politics has indeed been transformed by the credit crunch, changed out of all recognition.
The old norms are gone, the new questions unanswered. The events of the last 12 months will shape politics for years to come