I was in at 6am to round up the morning's papers today

and although I destest the daily mail and Richard Littlejohn, his column is top notch today.

Back to the future with Vatman and Dobbin...

There they stood, Vatman and Dobbin. Gordon and his glove puppet, casually trying to explain why they've just blown £100billion on a bankrupt bank.

We're told this was the day when Labour's reputation for economic competence died. That depends on whether you ever bought into the Big Lie in the first place.

If you listened to gutless Gordon, this was all the fault of the Bedford Falls Savings & Loan Corporation, located somewhere in Los Angeles, California, for irresponsibly doling out unsecured mortgages to inbred banjo players with bad teeth on trailer parks in Tuscaloosa.

Nothing to do with the fact that the bunch of spivs running Northern Rock were playing the same game, knocking out monster mortgages to minimum-wage monkeys in Middlesbrough, until their line of credit dried up.

Now the rest of us will have to pick up the bill. The idea that the Government is going to recoup the money, let alone make a profit, is risible.

If Richard Branson and the private equity merchants keen to pick the bones wouldn't come up with the cash, who else do those financial geniuses, Hopkirk and Hopkirk (Deceased), think will come riding to the rescue?

For five months they've been dithering, hoping something might turn up. Well, I've got news for you, chaps, it ain't gonna happen.

If they think the Beijing Banking Corporation or the Acme Investment Agency of Argentina is going to pay top dollar for the wreckage of the Rock, they are not only kidding themselves, they are insulting our intelligence on an intergalactic scale.

The best they can hope for is a fire sale somewhere down the line, which will be lucky to net a fifth of what the taxpayer is already in for.

Insisting that it's "business as usual" is preposterous. Despite the fact that the Government is underwriting savings, only a congenital idiot would open a new account with Northern Rock.

This is a dead bank. It has ceased to be. It is no more. Nailing it to the perch isn't going to bring it back to life.

You will hear them argue that the Rock has assets, in the form of deposits and loans secured against bricks and mortar.

Forget it. Anyone with half a brain got his or her money out the day the Weimar Republic queues snaked along the High Street. As for the value of the mortgage book, we are not talking The Bishops Avenue here, more like a former council flat in Cullercoats and a starter home in Scotswood. When they come up for auction, Arab princes are likely to be conspicuous by their absence.

Despite Gordon trying to blame everyone but himself, it's his own fault. He could have let the Bank of England put together a concert party to mount a rescue bid, but as usual he hesitated.

Some say he should have nationalised Northern Rock on the spot. But it was wrong then and it's wrong now. The Government has no business owning banks, any more than coal mines or car manufacturers.

Gordon was blinded by the light of partisan political considerations. The only thing he could see was all those votes in Labour's north-east strongholds going south.

Let me put it into perspective. If Coutts - the so-called "top people's bank" - had gone belly-up, do you think Labour would have been so keen to bail it out to the tune of £100billion, which could be better spent on schools'n'ospitals and sticking another few hundred thousand outreach co-ordinators on the payroll?

Precisely. Gordon's view would have been that it served the greedy, rich Tory bastards right.

We're are asked to swallow that this is the least worse option. But would it really have been all that bad to let Branson buy it?

At least Beardie knows how to run a business. Gordon only knows how to run away.

What if it had been Virgin Atlantic in trouble? The Government wouldn't have moved a muscle to save it.

And, in any event, can you imagine an airline run by Gordon Brown? There'd be more staff than passengers and the pension fund would go missing on Day One. Look at the madwoman's breakfast ministers made of trying to run British Airways. What makes anyone think a government-run bank is any different?

Inside the Westminster village, they're speculating that this is the end for Alistair Darling.

But this mess is not of the monkey's making. It's down to the organ grinder and no amount of finger pointing at the "global turbulence" is going to convince anyone otherwise.

I don't seem to remember Gordon crediting "global" forces with any of his self-proclaimed successes, even though the boom years owed more to American interest rate policy and the Chinese economic explosion than anything he did.

So here we are again, back to the future with a Labour nationalisation straight out of Life On Mars. Bring on Red Robbo.

It's pointless piling it all on Darling. He's about as capable of independent thought and movement as Muffin the Mule.

It's like blaming Emu, not Rod Hull, for attacking Parky. Shooting the glove puppet won't help.

Huzzah!

Posted By: Stoopish, Feb 19, 09:15:33