RBS: a failure made in Scotland

The likely nationalisation of the Royal Bank of Scotland is a humiliation to rank with the collapse of the Darien scheme in 1699. Just as they did 300-odd years ago, Scottish ambitions to cut a dash on the world financial stage have turned to dust, leaving the money men of Edinburgh to scuttle cap in hand to Westminster.

The failure of Darien, a colonial venture intended to carve out a Scottish empire on a fever-stricken isthmus in central America, cost the nation its independence. In return for bailing out the Scots mercantile class, which had been wiped out speculating on the venture, the English essentially bought the entire country. The RBS fiasco is unlikely to roll back devolution, but may give Scots pause as they wonder how far to pursue Alec Salmond's separatist dream.

For this truly was a failure made