Shadow chancellor Alistair Darling has described how RBS was "a couple of hours" from collapse at the peak of the financial crisis.
Speaking to Today presenter James Naughtie, he described a "frenzied conversation" with a senior RBS executive, asking him "what are you going to do?"
"Happily we did have a plan, and we stopped the bank from closing," he said.
The decision to pump tax payers money into the banking system had now been vindicated, he argued, saying it was now "patently obvious that we will get our money back".
But while he defended Labour's handling of the crisis, he was critical of its handling of the aftermath.
"We won the war... but we didn't win the peace. We failed miserably to win the peace."
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