Rebuilding Society

Instead of the proposed mass branch closures, the public ownership of HBOS should lead to the re-constitution of the Halifax Building Society, as the template for rebuilding the highly localised mutual movement throughout the country.

That would be the right thing to do. And Gordon Brown should consider that it might also save a previously super-safe seat, plus at a hell of a push at least one neighbouring marginal as well.

However, the controlling public stake in the Bank of Scotland is now, like that in RBS, a non-negotiable safeguard of the Union.