Rapid mass privatisation, anyone? Of the various ways of ridding the British government of its unwanted bank stakes, the quickest would be to distribute shares to the adult public. For a struggling government, this might seem like a vote winner – after all, every household in the UK has £3,000 invested in the Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group alone. Predictably, the Treasury officials playing fund manager over at UK Financial Investments, the body managing the 70 per cent and 43 per cent stakes in RBS and Lloyds respectively, mention the idea nowhere in the exit strategy paper released on Monday.

This is hardly surprising, not just because “shock therapy” has fallen out of fashion in recent years, blamed for corruption, disorderly markets, undercapitalised industries and even higher adult mortality rates in some post-communist societies. It is a non-starter because all non-cash methods of privatisation have zero appeal to Alistair Darling, chancellor of the exchequer. Distributing free vouchers exchangeable into shares in RBS and LLoyds might be a politician’s dream, but it would not help repay the £37bn debt amassed in the October recapitalisation of the two banks. The political gains would also be short lived: households receiving the windfall would have to hand it back in higher taxes.