Any other business: Boffins tell us time travel is possible — but sadly not for Northern Rock

I wrote here in July that I was hoping to see history reversed at Northern Rock. Shortly after that, Swiss boffins declared that time travel really might be possible, after discovering they could fire neutrinos through an Alpine tunnel at a fraction faster than the speed of light. But the idea of propelling the privatised remains of the Rock backwards through several decades — to emerge as a mutually owned and socially responsible provider of mortgages to sensible savers in the north-east — was never high on the Treasury’s agenda.

The bank whose 2007 collapse heralded 2008’s financial armageddon was always going to be sold to the highest bidder at the earliest moment a deal could be made to stand up and not look too embarrassing for George Osborne. That is what has now happened: Virgin Money is paying £747 million plus a stream of future payments that could yield a final price close to the bank’s £1.1 billion ‘book value’. Though this is a loss against £1.4 billion of taxpayer bailout money, it doesn’t look bad in relation to current stockmarket valuations of banks at discounts to book of 50 per cent or worse.

Labour spokesmen said Osborne should have held on for a better deal. Osborne parried by claiming a ‘secret Labour deal with Brussels’ over a deadline for the sell-off had obliged him not to linger. The truth is that conditions in the banking sector are likely to deteriorate in coming months, so £747 million now and one less patient in the Treasury sanitorium is a reasonable outcome. And my man in the stand at what used to be St James’ Park tells me Geordies are far less concerned at the rebranding of the Rock’s surviving 75 branches under the banner of Virgin Media than they are at the renaming of their football stadium as the Sports Direct Arena by Newcastle United’s controversial owner, retail entrepreneur Mike Ashley.

Though the Rock’s charitable foundation continues to do good works in its home territory, the bank itself began to destroy its roots when it demutualised, joined the FTSE 100 and launched its ultimately catastrophic bid for national market share under the leadership of Adam Applegarth.