What did Goodwin’s fall achieve?

Last week, in a ritual fit for some backward African state, Britain rejoiced as the former Sir Fred Goodwin was stripped of his knighthood.

It was a victory for the mob, a moment of public humiliation which would have been at place on an alcohol-sodden Saturday afternoon after a rowdy football match.

Instead, what we witnessed was the nation which led the world in civilised public behaviour for the last two hundred years or so falling to mob rule, driven on by the tabloid press. There is nothing worse than the British press when it is in its hysterically most judgmental mood.

Nothing can compare to the press in its moment of madness; not the Salem witch hunts, not the baying mobs calling for ‘justice’ during the Paris Commune, not the gin-sodden stupor of Victorian England.

The press – tabloid and so-called serious ones – when it is seeking vengeance, nah, when it is in its most vindictive mood, has something of the mad house about it.

Fred Goodwin, formerly a knight of the realm, has clearly crossed her Majesty’s Scribes. They wanted his blood.

Mr Goodwin (as he now is) maybe arrogant, vain, selfish, managerially incompetent, over-confident, under-qualified for his position at the top of the banking tree, but he is not criminal – at least as far as we know.

He might have led Britain’s biggest bank to the edge of totally being wiped out, but even this moment of insanity must be seen in context: he was operating in a national, regional and global banking environment in which it was believed that anything was possible. He was closely watched by a regulator which has claimed for itself to be the best in the world.

We now know that was not true. Its chief executive, Hector Sants, admitted as much in his recent appearance before the Treasury select committee.

Even Ben Bernanke, the closest living thing at the time to a banking almighty, was found wanting when the time for critical vigilance came.

Of course, there was a powerful case for state intervention in the banking mess that nearly brought the economy to its knees. And there still is time to act by removing all those who were in executive positions when their banks collapsed, or nearly did so, compelling them to account for their decisions during those dark times.

But the ritual humiliation of a single man is not it. A sacrifice to a mob calling for more and more blood is not the answer.

What the nation wants to know is what really went on during those boom years in boardrooms up and down the country; what were the non-executive directors up to during those board meetings; what were the auditors up to when reading the fantasy figures in financial directors’ reports?