Darling–not Brown–came up with the plan to save the banks

There is a great tick-tock in The Times this morning about how the bank recapitalisation plan came into being. The take-away point is that the Chancellor was much more the driving force behind it than the Prime Minister. Here are the key extracts:

The Times can reveal today that the Chancellor believed that recapitalisation was the “only show in town” some time before Gordon Brown and that the Prime Minister signed up only after the intervention of his ministerial fixer and enforcer, Baroness Vadera.

…

Mr Darling had first started plotting his move in mid-September, hiring the legal firm Slaughter and May to carry out contingency planning. He quickly became convinced that it was the only viable option to ease lending.

Mr Brown was persuaded only when an informal committee of “wise men” drawn up by Lady Vadera, his ministerial enforcer, worked up a secret blueprint in the first few days of October.