RBS: All fur coat and no knickers

Such is the disrepute into which Scotland’s once all-conquering bankers have fallen that the favoured put down at Edinburgh dinner parties these days is “My husband pays your husband’s salary”. A period of silence on the part of these erstwhile Masters of the Universe would be most welcome. This injunction, it seems, also applies to their spouses. That sound you hear is the noise of a righteous middle-class populism. These are disconcerting, humiliating times to be a Scottish banker.

Nowhere is this more keenly felt than at the Royal Bank of Scotland’s headquarters at Gogarburn on the western outskirts of Edinburgh. RBS’s downfall and subsequent nationalisation-in-all-but-formal-name has made it open season on bankers in Scotland’s capital. At dinner parties in the Georgian New Town or leafy Morningside they’ve been stripped of even their right to have a strongly-held opinion. Truly, the mighty have been humbled.

Today’s AGM in Edinburgh is unlikely to do much to ease the pain felt in the Scottish capital after a debacle that has become all too illustrative of our times.