Brown faces first panel grilling over economy - papers

The Prime Minister suffered one of his toughest days of the recession yesterday when he was forced to personally sanction the removal of one of his closest banking allies as a City regulator, unemployment climbed to two million and the Bank of England warned the economy will have shrunk by 4% by the summer. Sir James Crosby was forced out of his job at the Financial Services Authority after allegations by a whistleblower. But, to add to Brown's woes, it emerged that the FSA had taken on Crosby as its deputy chairman even though it had been concerned about the risks being taken by the HB...