The Co-op joins the premier league and the banker-bashers are watching

Hail to the Co-operative Bank, which has snapped up the 632 branches that Lloyds was under orders from Brussels to shed by next year. The price looks like a buy-one-get-one-free sofa sale: £350 million down with £400 million to pay over 15 years ‘if targets are met’, against Lloyds’ initial expectation of £1.5 billion-plus. That’s hardly a joy for taxpayers who own 40 per cent of Lloyds, but it triples the size of the Co-op branch network — a boost to banking biodiversity that must surely be positive for the high-street economy.

One good thing about the Co-op is that it is based in Manchester, far from the taint and corruption of the City of London. Handelsbanken, the Swedish group which scores high marks from customers of its 129 UK branches, also has an HQ nearby, and if I was Manchester’s spinmeister I’d be ringing Robert Peston with an ‘exclusive’ about the ‘new capital of sensible banking’.