Politics | 21 March 2009

Once a week, about half of the Cabinet make the rather pointless journey into an underground bunker in Whitehall to learn just how quickly the British economy is disintegrating. This is all to humour Gordon Brown, who calls them his ‘National Economic Council’ and has them meet in the nuclear-proof room as if they were at war with the recession. After six months of such meetings, it is depressingly clear to all concerned that the recession is winning, and in ways that they never really thought possible.

Given that almost everyone in Westminster is trying desperately to read the politics of the recession, those summoned to the Brown bunker have at least one clear advantage. They are learning about its character: how, for example, the City of London’s pain is being shared in unlikely satellite towns such as Bournemouth, which had grown a mini-financial services industry. They know there is no sign of Mr Brown’s stimulus making a blind bit of difference anywhere.