I think it would be better and less disingenuous if Guido made his personal disagreements clear and let readers take their own view on the practical courses of action open at the time referred to.

Otherwise dear Guido will find he is redefining the meaning of a big-mouth by trying to have his cake and eat it and have a time machine to enable him to return to that point in history to enjoy the experience over and over again.

“You wouldn’t want to start from here” ain’t apocryphal; I have not been much in Ireland, but I have got that response twice.

OK, none of us wanted to start from where Darling had well and truly put his foot in it; but that was the name of the game. Darling had already done the really bad bit of the nationalisation. He had put us taxpayers on the hook. At that point the only logical courses were to vote out Darling and Brown, repudiating their committment, or to do the whole nationalisation. The first alternative was optimal, but sadly not attainable. Cable therefore rightly went for the second best.

And Cable did not say he was misled. He said we all had been misled – the Treasury and Co had not done their homework. A statement of the excrutiatingly obvious, but there are moments when blatently unmistakeable bumbling needs to called by its name.

There is some truth in it and it applies to the situation to some extent when Darling blundered and guaranteed the wholesale money market obligations of an over-trading bank. However, and this is the nub of my criticism of Cable, just because they had started on the wrong path was no reason for Cable to say “hurry up and along your way to nationalisation”.

Hank Paulson, US Treasury Secretary, looked visibly shocked standing next to him when Darling, possibly off the cuff, made the commitment to guarantee the bank’s wholesale obligations not just Rock’s deposits, publicly in front of the TV cameras.

It was mad. Cable should have known that nationalisation was not the answer. It is not good enough now to say he was misled. Incidentally, the Tory treasury team were reluctant to stick their neck out and advocate administration, not exactly their finest hour. Cable welcomed the taxpayer being put on the hook, a far worse blunder.

I had a go at him on this question in his lair. He ain’t listening, but when Vince first suggested nationalisation, Darling/Brown had already waded in with the first Government guarantees. The clean winding up of Northern Rock was not on offer.

I think we all agree with Guido that this nationalisation will end in tears. The quantity of tears is already greater than it need have been because the nationalisation was delayed. But once the Government had started giving guarantees, the alternatives were even more expensive and distressing- as Vince saw.

Hardly *makes* him one… reinforces his previously-established idiot status, perhaps.

So… little Guido is a self-confessed liar and sham artist – good for gossip, but unreliable with anything more substantial.

It must be demoralising for a man with such a large ego to know he’s just a pawn in a game of much bigger players.

And to wind-up NR when the government was already underwriting it would have meant to have expropriated however many billions it was by that stage straight into the bankers hands – which is essentially what Vince is complaining about is happening now to a similar extent.

Really it should be no surprise that John Redwood was planning a windfall for his former colleagues in the corporate finance world considering he is still highly involved in it himself.

So firstly Guido contradicts himself and secondly Redwood exposes a clear conflict of interest.

Hmm, tories… you are past masters in using your official positions to promote your private interests and using the profits from your private interests to support your party – hand in glove at all?

Thanks for drawing our attention to your behaviour.

Good God, expect earthquakes.

Ooh, I’m rotten roday.

Which makes Guido an idiot.

Vince was actually keener on nationalisation than Gordon and Alistair. It will be an expensive disaster.

The Tories, as you say, didn’t have an identifiable or coherent policy either. Doesn’t make Vince right. Northern Rock should have been allowed to go into administration – there was no systemic risk to the banking system. This has now introduced extreme moral hazard and will cost the taxpayer dearly.

His critique after the event maybe trenchant but we might not be here if he and the Tories had said, correctly, let Bank of England put it into administration and effect an orderly wind-up.

You may be an apologist for Vince but I’m no apologist for the pathetic Tory response.