Mr Brown was defiant in the face of City outrage despite the UK government’s annual operating loss of £100bn, rising to £1.5 trillion when the write-down of its banking assets is taken into account.

The prime minister said: “I’ve been building up this pension since I became an MP, it’s all completely legal and now you want to take it away because I’ve been catastrophically bad at my job and you’re looking for a scapegoat. What gives?”

He added: “Yes I’ve been in charge of financial regulation for 12 years, yes I encouraged the housing bubble, and yes I pissed billions up the wall giving pointless jobs to Labour voters, but I fail to see what any of this has to do with me being incredibly well off.”

Brown’s £3m pension pot is expected to cast the spotlight on the extravagant retirement packages of other failed politicians including Alistair Darling’s inexplicable £1.7m and the £1.5m awarded to John Prescott for being a national disgrace for 10 years.

Meanwhile Margaret Beckett has a fund worth £1.7m, and Tessa Jowell has £1m even though no-one has the faintest idea what either of these actually do.

Critics insist Mr Brown has a moral duty to hand back his pension fund as he will inevitably receive a multi-million pound advance for two volumes of eye-gougingly tedious memoirs which will end up in the bargain bucket at WH Smith within a fortnight.

Martin Bishop, head of pension rows at the Institute for Studies, said: “It’s a fascinating dynamic. The politicians blame the bankers, the bankers blame the politicians, and the ordinary taxpayer is down on all fours with a confused look on his face, being fucked at both ends.”

Ministers, in their ultimate wisdom, believe the only way to get the credit system moving again is to give billions of pounds to the banking sector and then threaten to take it back from them, bit by bit, in multi-million pound fines.

Chancellor Alistair Darling said: “We will use the money raised from the fines to recapitalise those banks that have been forced to pay very heavy fines. The banks must then use that money for lending and if they don’t they will be fined. We will then use the money raised from those fines to recapitalise the banks that have been fined and if they don’t lend that money they will be fined. Again.” Glad that cleared things up!

Mr Darling went on to say that those fines would then be used to recapitalise the banks that had been fined, before he was interrupted by a senior Treasury official. The chancellor was then wheeled into the corner of the room where a heavy woollen blanket was draped over his head.

Now, by all means please do stop me if I’m being a total and utter idiot, but if we control the banks and we know what the banks are supposed to do, why can’t we just tell them to do it?