Newsroom blog: a day of questions

Last Modified: 13 Oct 2008
By: Newsroom blogger

Inside this morning's meeting...

We have general rule of thumb to post only one questioning headline at a time on the Channel 4 News home page. But today, it's going to be difficult.

It is an "absolutely gigantic news day" again. We've been saying it a lot recently, but the effective nationalisation of some of Britain's biggest banks is unprecedented and historic.

The facts that the British government now own 40 per cent shares in the Lloyds TSB and HBOS merger and 60 per cent in the Royal Bank of Scotland raises some staggering questions that must be asked:

First, what will the government do with its part of the banks it now owns? What does this mean for the rest of us? What happens if you're a small business that can't get a loan from a bank, which is part owned by government shares paid for with public taxes?

Then, what is the cost of this to the public, and how will it be funded? Only last week it was announced that this wasn't the idea - so the swift change of plan tells a lot about the drama in the government's strategy to this.

Finally, will it work? The government's aim is to make the banks profitable again and then sell their shares. Logic says it should work, but if it doesn't, and the shares go down further, the government stands to make a big loss.

These are the main issues, but of course there a multitude of other stories in this:

The chief executives and chairmen of the two banks have been removed from their posts, and the government has promised that senior directors will get no cash bonuses for them this year. But is it possible to identify the "guilty men" in the money industry who led us to this point? Did they do anything wrong, or were they just being successful?

And what of Gordon Brown? By all appearances he's having a "good war" with this. He's stormed into the press conferences, fuming anger at the banks and throwing sound bites out left, right and centre. Clearly he's stepped up to the mark and his confidence is brimming. Is this his turning point?

And then there's still the matter of Iceland. Frosty, no pun intended, relations still permeate the lines between Alistair Darling and Reykjavik and it's still not clear who and when will be financially rescued.

Some fingers are pointing at the Dutch, who have the same problem with Iceland but have already agreed a smooth compensation deal. Was Britain too aggressive in its dealing with Iceland?

There are of course other stories in the news today, not least Julian Rush's exclusive on a potential catastrophic flooding of a UK nuclear weapons factory; and the government's defeat on it's 42 days Terrorism Bill.

So, be sure to watch tonight's Channel 4 News to see how Jon Snow, Faisal Islam and Gary Gibbon, and the rest of the team all get to the bottom of these questions.