"I’m not suggesting that tomorrow morning everybody in Southern Europe is going to take their money out of their banks," he said. "We saw with Northern Rock, everything can be fine on day, and even though I said the Government was standing behind people’s money, we saw queues grow and grow and grow because people thought they were doing the right thing getting their money out." Once that has happened, Mr Darling said, it would be "incredibly difficult to haul it back".