While the ECB will on Wednesday offer unlimited loans to European banks (as it seeks to throw those banks that have yet to return one-year loans a lifeline) The Slog understands these will be for a maximum of six months, and in 9 out of 10 cases, three months.

This is merely a stay of execution: for such banks there will be no reprieve – there can be no reprieve. Obvious….but still enough to spook the lending markets and send borrowing rates shooting upwards. And, of course, enough to send the euro down yet again: Sterling was up 0.7% and the Dollar 0.5% against the EU’s currency at mid-afternoon BST.

But the eurozone’s critical state is not being helped at all by the impasse at Board level in the ECB, where anti-deficit hawks are gaining ground against the increasingly bemused boss Jean-Claude Trichet. Criticism of Trichet is now openly expressed.

The same sources telling the Slog a month ago that Greece was a write-off and Spain would be next were openly discussing the demise of the single currency this morning. And UK Parliamentary contacts remain certain that the Hague/Osborne/Cameron axis is confident that, come November, Van Rompuy will not be in a position to demand anything from the UK.