Hugh Pym

It was one of the gravest challenges faced by any British government in peacetime. The banking system, taken for granted by most of the population to pay for life’s essentials, came close to collapse.

Yet nobody going about their business in October 2008 had any inkling how vulnerable the nation’s financial infrastructure was. Nobody, that is, bar a small group of policymakers and ministers working frantically in Whitehall and the City of London. Royal Bank of Scotland, larger than the entire annual output of the UK economy, had toppled.

Another banking giant Halifax/Bank of Scotland was in desperate need of a bailout. A staggeringly large bill had to be paid to stave off disaster. But could Britain afford it? Doing nothing might have seen cash machines closed, depositors panicking and troops on the streets.

These were the appalling dilemmas facing Downing Street and The Treasury.

This the definitive insider’s account of to the UK banking crisis,

Hugh Pym has been one of the leading commentators on the banking crisis and the British economic recession. He was The BBC's former Chief Economics Correspondent in2013. Prior to then He worked for C4, Sky and ITN.