Gordon Brown has been dealt another humiliating blow in his efforts to avoid nationalising Northern Rock after the Office for National Statistics announced it is treating the stricken bank as a 'public financial corporation'.
The Prime Minister is desperate to find a private buyer for the Rock to quickly recoup the £55billion in taxpayer-funded loans and guarantees which are currently keeping it afloat.
Nationalisation would mean saddling the taxpayer with the multi-billion pound loan arrangement for years and possibly decades, and 140,000 small shareholders would see the value of their holdings wiped out.
The last time the government was forced to take over a failing company was in 2001, when it put Railtrack into administration and faced years of legal action by shareholders.
Today the government-funded Office for National Statistics (ONS) said it had reclassified Northern Rock for statistical purposes, switching it from the private to the public sector.
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