The “nationalisation” of Northern Rock is no such thing. It is a period of pragmatic public stewardship until market conditions improve when, in one form or another, it will be unwound. This pragmatism resembles that of the postwar nationalisations – an uncomfortable truth that neither Old Labour nor David Cameron’s Conservatives are willing to accept.

The postwar Labour government was able to build a coalition in favour of nationalisation that included capitalists and some Tories because it was an urgent and practical imperative to modernise a decaying infrastructure devastated by war. There was distrust that coal-mine owners, railway magnates, private power generators and iron and steel companies would invest to the degree necessary to generate wealth and jobs for homecoming heroes. They had not done so during the 1930s; why should more be expected in crippled, savings-free, postwar Britain? In France, where nationalisation went even further, it was brute reality and sheer economic need that created the same pragmatic coalition.