I cannot help thinking that there is something more than a touch ironic about the British government putting its reputation in the hands of an investment bank as it struggles to salvage something from the wreckage of Northern Rock. The financial chicanery that brought the roof down on global markets last summer is now to be set to the purpose of rescuing one of its casualties.

Anything but nationalisation, one of Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s cabinet colleagues told me the other day as he mulled the government’s narrowing options. The politics were too redolent of the days when many in the Labour party thought state control of the banks was a good idea.