News this weekend that Labour plan to force Lloyds and RBS to sell off large tranches of their branches, especially in Scotland is presumably a good thing. Not many people would argue that the dominance of a tiny number of mega-banks is doing anyone any favours, especially in Scotland, where the demise of HBOS is sorely felt. Even in Leith, if you want a bank with a branch in the neighbourhood people only have a choice between banks owned by Lloyds, RBS and Santander. I can imagine that in many small Scottish towns choice barely exists, if it ever existed before the credit crunch anyway.

However, as the papers digest the mechanics of these break-ups it seems that the best Labour are hoping for is that either Tesco, or Virgin Money will take on these new branch networks, because they will at least appear to be British. Frankly, I can't see Tesco taking on a branch network. They've got their own ubiquitous bricks and mortar portfolio that already spans the country. Why buy up a whole network of shops, most of which won't be big enough to accomodate a Tesco Metro? I can't see it. And as for Virgin? Well it's just a brand that wraps around other people's money - money that the Guardian says would probably be foreign anyway.

So, it looks as though, after all the UK tax payers money, Labour are going to have to spend another £40 Billion of tax payer cash to sell the assets to one or more foreign owned banks. This sounds like an immensely expensive own-goal. At some points during the banking crisis it looked as if the treasury were considering returning some of the tax payer owned banks to mutual status, but these ideas seem to have been dismissed as too complicated, and not lucrative enough in the short term.

Even if remutualising one, or all, of these de-merged banks is more expensive in the short term, even if it is immensely complicated, surely the right decision is to remutualise? The only people who'll benefit from a quick fire sale of UK Banking plc to foreign capital are the Labour politicians who'll be able to make a few headlines about paying down the national debt - presumably they'll want those headlines in time for the election too.

But over time a sale to other foreign mega-banks will see more money, more power, and more business credibility sucked out of the UK and repatriated elsewhere. We've already seen how a Lloyds Banking group are seeking to cut their funding for charities and good causes. How committed will foreign owned banks be to investing in the communities where the operate?

And when it's gone, it's gone. Labour, and perhaps the Tories who may follow them, have an historic opportunity to reshape UK banking for the good of all UK citizens - and bring an end to the era of 'Casino Capitalism'.

Some people have proposed that Labour could bring back the Trust Savings Bank in Scotland as a mutual bank, true to it's orignal aims of providing affordable banking services to the poorest in society. What a great idea, and one that would help to bring trust and stability to retail banking. It would also help to maintain resources in Scotland for the benefit of Scottish people. But most importantly it would be a fantastic symbol to people that politicians aren't just the servants of big, private capital in the city. It would show that that there is value in mutual ownership and control that is, in fact, priceless.