Back in February, when the Government belatedly nationalised Northern rock, I wrote a post on this blog that said it was a bad idea.

I criticised Vince Cable’s idea of nationalising the bank and suggested that the right thing to do would have been to let the bank go under, a view that has been supported by more than one person I have spoken to in the industry.

I deeply respect Dr Cable’s intellect, but have always maintained that, as an academic economist with only 2 years’ experience in the private sector, he is not very commercial in his outlook.

The motivation for injecting disproportionate funds in to the bank was clearly political and not in the public interest .

Now Northern Rock has, as predicted, posted £585m losses, is taking a £3bn cash injection from the government and looking more like a millstone around the taxpayers’ necks every day.

Vince is now blaming the “private sector managers”, the FSA and the Government for this debacle. Perhaps he’s right insofar as the system clearly didn’t work.

Shouldn’t he also take some responsibility for pushing the nationalisation agenda as well?  As I said at the time - “he was wrong then and he’s wrong now”.