The most dispiriting lesson from the reports into the HBOS disaster is that we don’t learn our lessons. As the long-delayed analysis makes clear, HBOS wasn’t some novel type of bank collapse.

This wasn't a bank brought down by new-fangled financial engineering, by sub-prime mortgage-backed securities or synthetic collateralised debt obligations. It was brought down by reckless property-backed lending that unravelled when market confidence evaporated.