Berwick on Tweed has been in the news because some of its denizens want to rejoin Scotland and benefit from Alex Salmond's largesse with English taxpayers' money. ITV even did a programme on the affair last night which I missed: TV is a slow way to absorb information. I did however bump into Joel Barnett in a bar in the House of Lords, one which I had never previously visited.
As chief secretary to the Treasury (1974-79), in cabinet during Jim Callaghan's premiership, Joel was a pillar of the Denis Healey Treasury, a cheerful, very clever Mancunian accountant both loved, respected and abused as a dangerous rightwinger by the standards of the time. It was he who devised the Barnett Formula to give Wales and Scotland more generous public spending settlements to ease their post-industrial transition and Labour's political problems.
It was meant to be temporary, but remains in place. David Cameron promises to change it, but may funk it in office like everyone else if he thinks it may cost votes or threaten the Union. The diminutive Lord Barnett (now a lively 84) is less timid. He wants a Lords ad hoc committee to investigate his formula with a view to ending it, but is so far being blocked in the Lords liaison committee despite support from the likes of Lord Lawson who used to be famous for being chancellor, not for being Nigella's dad.
''It's crazy. Scotland gets £1,500 per head more than England,'' he explained last night. That's the money Smart Alex is having such fun spending. Watch out, Berwick, you may jump ship just as Whitehall pulls the plug out.
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