Unbelievable. It is the only word to describe Alistair Darling’s announcement on Northern Rock yesterday. Anyone who thinks this decision will put an end to the Government’s dithering embarrassment in the Northern Rock saga, must live in the Looking Glass world of Gordon Brown, who seems to make a point these days of believing six impossible things before breakfast.

Of course, nationalisation was the right decision - and indeed was the only credible option from the very start of this disaster. But that doesn’t mean that yesterday’s announcement was right.

Far from it. The devil is in the detail of financial announcements, as Mr Darling should surely have learnt from his humiliating U-turns over capital gains tax and nondoms. And every detail of yesterday’s announcement was exactly, unbelievably, wrong.

While it was clear to almost everyone apart from the denizens of Downing Street that state ownership would be the only sensible and morally justifiable way to deal with Northern Rock once it was forced to turn to the Treasury for state funding, nationalisation was bound to be only the beginning, not the end, of the tough decisions incumbent on the Government.

The purpose of nationalisation should not have been - and in the end will not be - what the Chancellor and the Rock’s new chairman, Ron Sandler, promised yesterday: to continue “business as usual” at the bank and eventually to return it to the private sector, maybe even securing a nice profit for taxpayers in the process. The purpose of nationalisation should have been - and in the end will be - to recoup £100 billion of taxpayers’ money as quickly as possible and to stop any further damage to Britain’s financial system by closing down the entire Northern Rock business and sacking most of its staff.

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