Alistair Darling nationalised Northern Rock in February 2008 amid warnings that he was landing the taxpayer with vast liabilities and signing his own political suicide note. George Osborne, shadow chancellor, declared he was “a dead man walking”.

The taxpayer’s liabilities may still be an unknown quantity, but Mr Darling can finally see a way out of the Northern Rock saga, which came to symbolise his faltering first six months at the Treasury.