If Alistair Darling, UK chancellor of the exchequer, had any doubts about the wisdom of bailing out the mortgage bank Northern Rock, such doubts would have been quickly dispelled by the picture of long queues of voters standing outside its branches to get their money back.

The political imperative is that savers who put their cash on deposit with a respected institution cannot be allowed to lose money, or even to seem to be at significant risk of losing money. I do not think it is reasonable to ask the person in the street to do more due diligence than is implied in the selection of a long-established bank with an extensive branch network. You may think otherwise but you would be ill-advised to defend your view at a public meeting – and that is what politicians must do. There is little more to be said.