Worlds collide outside the Westminster village

I spent last night hosting the Channel 4 Political Awards. I’ll talk about them in one of my next blogs.

But the point is, I was in the very heart of the Westminster village, where journalists, politicians, lobbyists and the rest become, briefly, one.

And I feel somehow that I have glimpsed three completely unrelated worlds this week. The first is crashing about us, reducing all the financial fundamentals upon which we have all depended all our lives to rubble.

In the second, none of these fundamentals ever amounted to anything very much, and the money that people talk about – all these trillions, all these bonuses – was entirely notional.

And third, the Westminster world, in some ways doesn’t seem to reflect what is happening out there. I met several politicians last night who told me that the “depression” was being exaggerated, that it is a recession like any other and that this, too, will pass.

Watching MPs grilling the prime minister this morning made me feel that the grill had lost three of its four (electrical) elements and was a decidedly cool affair. In the end, in an arena like that, inevitably MPs feel elevated by being in the same room as the man in charge, slightly beholden.

It’s not that you want to see the leader defenestrated at such an event. But I think what I’ve been watching has been what we in the industry might term a disappointment.