Since my last Westminster Gleanings, I have been in Ethiopia and the world has turned upside down, the bottom fallen out of public and personal financial security and every disaster-movie cliché used in an effort to describe the economic avalanche in the world’s markets. In September, I see I was moaning about the appalling and unceasingly wet weather here this year and to much more devastating effect in other parts of the world; in particular areas of Bihar that I know well enough to be able to picture the destruction and misery all too clearly. The economic downturn will further impede both emergency and long-term development aid there and in other poor regions. In Ethiopia, I saw few pointers to the drought and famine afflicting the far south-east of the country, but the development agency signs down the sides of every road in the south are indicative of the huge need for the ongoing aid initiatives in Africa which are likely to be affected by the Northern wealthy feeling a new pinch.

In the last piece, I anticipated political disaster and the potential downfall for the prime minister at the Labour Party conference. No such thing occurred. The party conferences were in truth a damp squib as Labour maintained the status quo amid few fireworks and, by the time the Conservatives gathered, the economic clouds were overhead encouraging the sort of wartime, all-working-together-for-the-common-good sort of speeches as opposed to the expected attacks on an increasingly enfeebled Gordon Brown. Since then, the prime minister has managed to place himself at the head of the economic rescue team and suddenly become a jolly good fellow again despite his role as, if not the original architect of, the current situation, at least an enthusiastic supporter and promoter during his tenure as chancellor of the exchequer of the banking policies responsible.

His remarkable rehabilitation of Peter Mandelson, European Union trade commissioner, eminence gris of New Labour, close friend of Tony Blair, spinner extraordinaire and previously, probably unfairly, disgraced as a minister; was seen to be properly statesmanlike. To bring back the right man for the job even if he is one of your worst enemies is the action of a big man, able to put his country before personal inclination. The new Lord Mandelson, it has to be said, looked as stunned by his appointment as business secretary as apparently were most of his colleagues and the country. He has hardly been off the front pages since, but things may be going awry again for this extraordinarily able politician, who is perpetually dogged by scandal so gleefully talked up by those for whom he remains the ‘Prince of Darkness’.

The brief spell of cross-party unity in the first stages of the economic collapse is foundering. The Opposition leader, David Cameron, had already begun to attack the government for irresponsibility in an attempt to counter the dramatic and — perhaps, on the basis of the devil-you-know principle — inevitably increased popularity of the prime minister and his economic team. The breaking of a story over the last week involving the shadow chancellor, George Osborne, Lord Mandelson, a Russian billionaire, Oleg Deripaska, whose fortune was built reputedly on more than habitually dubious business practices, and the financier Nat Rothschild, descendant of generations of European bankers who have successfully and discreetly meddled in and bankrolled European power games; has given both major parties bodies opportunity to sling mud. These days with instant communications, a constantly vigilant press and a more overt dog-eat-dog mentality, the private machinations of the powerful and the wealthy that quietly oiled wheels for centuries are no longer able to remain discreet. Rothschild has gone very public indeed to declare open season on those whom he feels abused his hospitality during a summer holiday in his villa in Corfu; mainly Osborne.

Osborne started the ball rolling, accusing Lord Mandelson, as much as anything else, of once again getting too close to the extravagantly wealthy lifestyle that he finds, on past form, an irresistible and ruinous magnet. Mandelson, too, stayed at the Rothschild villa and visited or stayed on the Deripaska yacht. He denies all implications that his role at that time as trade commissioner with the ability to influence tariffs on the imports of aluminium from Russia had anything to do with the fact that Deripaska has made much of his fortune out of it. On this occasion, Mandelson has a champion in Rothschild, who, offended by Osborne’s betrayal of confidences at a private house party and in spite of a lifelong friendship, has come out fighting on behalf of the new business secretary. He accuses his old schoolfellow of soliciting Conservative Party funding to the tune of £50,000 from Deripaska, which the latter refused. So much messy dealing from which Osborne emerges as an ambitious young politician who has behaved at best like an over-opportunistic schoolboy, showing no judgment and, as the British voters suspect, exactly how little experience he has. At worst, a potential chancellor to whom legality is no obstacle to expediency.

As further mud is slung, the most important question now focussed upon by commentators and parliament is the outlawing, since 2000, of political donations by foreigners and the exploitable loophole of legal donations from British companies owned by the same. It will be interesting to see if the saga proves to be a storm in a teacup based on more than the delight of the British public in whipping itself up into a state of puritanical righteous indignation over the rich and famous behaving in a rich and famous way. To tell the truth, the oddest thing about the whole saga is that George Osborne, potentially putting his reputation in some jeopardy over a party donation, asked a Russian billionaire for a mere £50,000. Hardly worth the effort. Would it have been any worse if he had gone all out and asked for £500,000 at the least? Deripaska might have felt he was buying something worth having at a higher price, like most of the other oligarchs who have used their amoral fortunes to buy themselves comfortable sinecures in this country and the toadying friendships of those who might be expected to know better.

In the end, the story is little more than fiddling while Rome burns. The governor of the Bank of England has finally mentioned the ‘R’ word, the pound continues to tumble, and nobody denies any more that we are entering or have entered a period of recession. For how long no one really knows, although the more cheerful pundits are talking about an upturn in the latter half of next year. I would make a poor economist, I can’t do the math for a start, but we haven’t hit the bottom yet and I suspect it will take far longer to restore the confidence necessary to climb out of a fall as steep and sharp as this has been. We have had it easy and been so heavily and easily encouraged into debt that recouping will be a long business and the too-late husbanding of any real resources will not encourage market revival in a hurry for the sake of paper profits.

Retail businesses are in trouble, the endless shopping frenzy of the last few years is finally on hold. Shops are desperately holding ‘mid-season’ sales, unheard of at this time of year and likely to be maintained right up to a parsimonious Christmas. Fascinating times, I suppose, but I hope I live long enough to look back at them through a warm glow of old age, not the chill when I can’t afford the heating any more.