HOWZAT

Did he speak to Salmond about his proposal?

“I have spoken to Alex,” he says. “It would be daft to pretend otherwise. He has been very measured. He feels that whatever happens, he has to try and get the best for Scotland. If he has to negotiate with Sir Victor Blank to get that, he would.

“Alex has said he backs us, maybe not as strongly as he might, but I’m not sure if that would be helpful or not. Gordon and Alistair aren’t going to be impressed with that. It’s bad enough that I’ve been associated with the SNP. That would automatically give it a political mantle when, actually, it’s not political at all.”

That seems disingenuous. This is a tussle about far more than the shareholder value of HBOS. It is a fight, if not for the soul of Scotland, then at least for its lungs. The Scottish banks provide the oxygen for the economy. It is widely believed that independence for Scotland would be much harder to achieve if the country did not have an independent bank.

“That may be true,” acknowledges Mathewson. “But the question then is, is it a political thing from Gordon and Alistair’s viewpoint rather than from my viewpoint? I have to hesitate before I say something in public about that. I find it inexplicable that Gordon Brown would be so anti . After all, HBOS is one of the largest employers in his own constituency.

“Maybe he’s done a deal with Victor that he won’t touch Dunfermline. There are certainly plenty of people who think makes absolute sense from the Labour party’s point of view but I’m not going to propound that.

“I think it might make independence harder. There are countries whose banking systems are owned by other countries but you will notice that Ireland took great care to retain its banks. But I’m certainly not going to go down in public ascribing those motives to Darling and Brown. Somebody else might, though.”

There has been a great deal of bile spewed in the direction of the “tartan knights” by London-based interested parties. Mathewson refuses to be drawn publicly about the motives. But you can’t help wondering if there is a hint of reciprocity when he says that HBOS would be better off in foreign ownership than in the hands of Lloyds TSB.

“We would also look at getting capital from elsewhere and we would look at a foreign owner,” he says. “That would be preferable to the current deal. You wouldn’t lose all the jobs, you would still have the competition and it would retain the senior personnel in the UK.”

From an emotional standpoint he cannot want to see this once great Scottish bank with centuries of tradition in hock to a Far or Middle Eastern institution. “I’m not emotional about it,” he says. “I will go for the best rational solution. I start with the shareholders and I think they should be getting about twice as much.”

With no named backers, no obvious war chest and a delay that has allowed Lloyds TSB a strong head start, the Burt/Mathewson proposal is unlikely to succeed even without the deep aversion of the prime minister. Mathewson is realistic about the duo’s chances of success.

“I think we have an uphill struggle because of the government’s objection,” he says. “It is hard to get other people interested in something that the government is opposing. But there seems to be a sense of just giving up and that is unnecessary.”

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