How Gordon and Alistair managed to botch the bailout

An interesting article by Tim Congdon in The Times explaining how the Bank of England under government instruction seems to have relinquished its "lender of last resort" status:

"The damage to confidence has been done. The world believes that Britain's banks are bust or semi-bust, whether at the last reporting date (end-June 2008) they had shareholders' funds of £200 billion or not. The British Government seems to agree with the world that organisations with capital about three months ago of £200 billion may be bust, and has decided that these organisations must raise more capital if they want to access the Bank's facilities.

Potential private investors cannot overlook that this year the British State has nationalised two banks (Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley) without their shareholders' consent. If the British State can bully banks to take actions that neither their management nor shareholders approve, isn't it understandable that the capital markets are reluctant to put more money in?"

Have Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling managed to start the nationalisation of the British banking sector without a vote being held? Looks that way to me.... Democracy, pah - this is policy on the hoof and to hell with the public.