If RBS becomes a soap opera it will all end in tears The job is obviously just as intellecutally challenging now as it was back in 2008 and Hester has clearly been doing plenty of thinking. It's no great surprise those thoughts have recently turned to resignation, given the unjustified attacks he's endured for doing the job he had been asked to do - namely clear up the mess left behind by Fred Goodwin and Labour's disaster of a regulatory system. Resigning would have been a disaster for all concerned, especially for us taxpayers who now own RBS. A successful turnaround can't be had for free but it is worth paying for. Hester walking out would have handed victory to the myopic, the misinformed and the malcontents who have the confused aims of both further undermining a bank that still needs a great deal of help and, more generally, establishing the idea that success is something to be ashamed of. Hester's calm performance on Radio 4 this morning won't have silenced this mad, albeit vociferous, minority. But it should have gone a long way to reassuring the reasonable majority that RBS is in safe hands and can be turned around to the nation's benefit. RBS was recapitalised using state funds but it relies on its day-to-day survival on genertaing revenues in a commercial world and the ability of Hester and his team to deliver those revenues profitably. It's only rational that he should be paid in a commercial way and I'm sure most people would agree that banking needs to be run on rational grounds. That said, the requirement for Hester to admit he thought about leaving and claim that he's "no robot" was toe curling. Business is not a soap opera. If it's turned into one then we all suffer. It's a tough, serious and largely unemotional process. RBS is just such a business. It's not a government department. Neither is it akin to organisations such as the BBC whose revenues are handed to it, not competed for tooth and nail. RBS is different and the pople running it need to be too.