What would Little Red Riding Hood say? That's the question that looms over us after yesterday's extraordinary statement by Alistair Darling on his £50 billion bank rescue plan. I say extraordinary but I only mean that because it was so wildly dull. How does he do it? It was like watching Botox.

As he explained why the taxpayer must rescue the banks (again), I wondered what it would take for His Dullness to raise one of his trademark bootblack beetlish eyebrows.

Frogs falling from the sky? Surely not, for these are turbulent times, even for frogs, and he would want to explain why falling frogs must be seen as a necessary balancing of the global amphibious liquidity market. It's all normal and there's no need to croak.

Next to him sat the Prime Minister, looking like a shipwreck. His face was like a piece of paper that had been crumpled by a violent hand. The eyebags are back with a vengeance. He sat and scribbled, a man under siege, this time for hurting the poor with his plan to abolish the 10p rate of tax.

Behind him sat parliamentary aide Angela Smith. Last week the PM interrupted his Washington trip to beg her not to quit. She looked grim yesterday but was at least wearing mustard, the colour of keen.

Everyone was waiting for Vince Cable, the sage of Twickenham, to tell us what was going on. He began by saying the Chancellor reminded him of Little Red Riding Hood.

“She went round trying to be kind and helpful but finished up being outmanoeuvred and then eaten by a wolf. The Chancellor is being in the process of being slowly devoured by the British banking system.”

This caused unrest. “Point of Order! Little Red Riding Hood wasn't eaten!” cried Labour heckler Chris Ruane, ludicrously.

The Chamber was in turmoil. Labour MPs seemed particularly het up but then, surely, Little Red must have been one of them.

The Speaker intervened to calm down MPs: “Honourable members are entitled to get stories wrong from time to time.” This caused further hoohah, so no one listened to the eminently sensible objections from Vince. Mr Darling, in response, chided Vince for not knowing how his fairy tales ended.

But, of course, as in so many things, Vince was right. In the original Brothers Grimm tale, the wolf did indeed eat Little Red. She was only saved by the hunter who extracted her from the wolf's stomach. But who is the hunter who is going to save the Chancellor and the Prime Minister now?

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