We are all savers at Northern Rock now ! Thanks Darling

There was a crushing interview with the chief secretary to the Treasury on radio 4's PM at about 17:20 today.

He was asked the question we have all been asking - if Northern Rock is so safe why don't you nip down and put all your savings in it minister ?

For once the R4 interviewer was having none of the usual evasion and restatement of the party line that New Labour robots ministers usually produce. The failure of the first serctetary to reply was crushing. It is one of the most complete destructions of a Labour party minister I have heard on the radio. I wonder if it didn't trigger what comes next.

Now Alistair Darling has just announced a novel answer to that question - we will all potentially be investors in Northern Rock through our taxes paid to the government ( which as Guido posted earlier has some strong links with the Labour party/government ).

This is an incredible precedent to set. Won't every future financial organisation in trouble ask for the same ? It must be a real and very deep crisis for this sort of last ditch defence. Does the chancellor even have the power to enforce this ?

Its too early to say if that was a change motivated by saving Labours political skin or from fear of the contagion spreading. But let us be clear it is 180 degrees away from the line the Bank of England was taking at the start of last week.

The spin and attempts to deflect blame by Labour minister continue. Appeals to every international organisation, G7,G8,EU, US are being made for better regulation - but this is not a US subprime loan scandal - it is a scandal of how the FSA and Bank of England as over seen by the Labour government and conceived by Gordon Brown have been run.

They squirm, they divert, they try to point at other people, they tell half truths about what David Cameron used to do for Norman Lamont. This is who they are.

And where is Gordon Brown? It only takes a cow with a sniffle for it to be made know that the PM is cancelling his holiday and being the man in charge of COBRA, but when its a national crisis that he has created we can't see him.

Just remember, this is who New Labour really are.... incompetent and shirkers of responsibility.