It looks as if the Bank of England will have to take the Coop Bank under its wing. The hedge funds which took a punt on the organisation (the Cooperative Group has now only a minority share in the business) have put it up for sale. It is not, unlike Barclays and HSBC too large to fail, but it is not small enough to be nimble like the new breed of challenger banks. So there may be no ready buyers.
The trouble began when, egged on by Gordon Brown who wanted to avoid any major building society collapsing on his watch, the bank overreached itself by buying the failing Britannia. It may have avoided this gross error if there had been more bankers on the board and fewer minor politicians (it was noticeable that the Labour Party was able to run up a huge overdraft in those days).
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