Well our dithering government has, at last made a decision about the future of Northern Rock, the first British bank to have suffered a run for 140 years. Since that run started over five months ago, the government has vacillated between selling the bank off cheap to the likes of Richard Branson's Virgin group, seeking other financier to whom to give the bank's assets at a knock-down price, and the route of last resort - nationalisation.

So why did the decision move against the Virgin option? The answer is that ever since the Northern Rock debacle commenced, many bright brains have given the subject a great deal of analysis. It became very clear early on that the cat was out of the bag. These bright brains applied themselves to advising the public and by extension, the electorate, what this all meant. The voters knew what giving the bank away meant for them, and what it meant for Mr. Branson. One would make billions and one would take all the risk. No prizes for guessing who would end up with each particular end of the stick.

At the outset I should declare an interest in this story. I am a shareholder of the bank. As a shareholder I do not favour any of the options that the government had to choose from. As a taxpayer, I have to say I favour the only sensible remaining option: Nationalisation. The question I have to ask is why it took so long to make the decision? I believe that the government truly thought that giving away the bank to Virgin would be the best option for them (not for the taxpayer). It would make it look like the private sector could manage things themselves and that the tax-payers' interests were well-taken care of in the capable hands of Britain's favourite bearded woolly-jumpered entrepeneur.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling's puppet-like figure telling us that the private rescue option was the favoured route until recently when nationalisation became the superior choice, only served to compound the appearance of government not having a clue. Poor Mr. Darling not only looked totally unconvincing, but also his performance felt ominously reminiscent of the then Agriculture Minister, John Selwyn Gummer feeding his four year old daughter a hamburger in the midst of the mad cow disease outbreak. That act of desperation did nothing to convince the public that beef was safe and Darling's attempts at re-assurance were equally unconvincing. Some believe that they only exacerbated matters and in fact made the bank run worse.

That may just be unkind speculation, but there is no doubt that savers felt unsafe with their money in the bank and voted with their feet by drawing more and more of their deposits from the stricken Wreck. Government attempts at re-assurance came far too late and were limited to saying that most people would not lose more than £2,000 if the bank went down, anyway. This either showed how remote the government is - £2,000 is real money to most people - or how inept it is.

What is most surprising is how much of the Wreck's fallout has managed to accumulate on the lone shoulders of Darling. According to surveys most people now believe he should lose his job. The fact that he walked into the job relatively late seems to have been completely overlooked, being overshadowed by reaction to his inept reassurances. Darling took over from now Prime Minister Gordon Brown in the summer of 2007 who had held the post for more than ten years. The system by which the FSA, the Treasury and the Bank of England were all responsible in part for regulating banks was set up by Brown. It was his government that chose the people who ran those organisations. The FSA has borne most of the criticism regarding the inadequacy of the monitoring of the bank, and they surely did fail in their duty, but the fact remains that people felt unsafe because they stood to lose some of their money. It was advocated many years ago after a similar run on a US bank that all deposits should be 100% protected. Brown and his cohorts did not effect any such system. And the Bank of England under Brown's system was forced to announce its offer of support to Northern Crock to the country compounding fear that was already rampant in the mind of the bank's investors.

The truth is that the taxpayer first and foremost and shareholders secondly have been let down by the regulators and ultimately by their political masters and in particular Mr. Brown. And it is the taxpayers and the shareholders who are having to pay for Mr. Brown's mistakes.