Would it have been cheaper to nationalise RBS?

With state control of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) creeping up to 84 pct, I wonder if it would have been cheaper to nationalise the bank? This might have created a hornet's nest between London and Edinburgh but it might have been cheaper, since it looks like the bank is going to be broken up anyway. Selling insurance assets like Direct Line won't making it any easier to repay taxpayer support and kow-towing to the European Commission shows how weak the government is.
Probably the UK government's balance sheet would not have been big enough to formally take on the RBS assets but state control might have avoided the furore about banker bonuses. The UK Treasury is probably regretting its disinterest in RBS taking over ABN Amro, where it looks like Spanish bank Banco Santander waltzed off with the best assets of the Dutch group while the British bank just took on board a lot of toxic debt.
The UK government did at least save the banking system a year ago since the economy could not have coped with the collapse of RBS or of the Halifax. It is a shame that taxpayers and bank employees are going to pay dearly for the mistakes of the past.