NC: I'm being slightly reductionist but I do believe in the primacy of economics in the sense that in the boom years the Conservative governments to some extent and the Labour governments were saying they were going to let the City take the money from lightly regulated capitalism and use it to fund their social projects. Actually the City isn't that important a part of the British economy — our computer and internet businesses, which are brilliant, are almost the same size. But no one talks about them because the City is big money and it's right  next to Westminister and Fleet Street.

That model has fallen apart. It's a model that David Cameron signed up to when he went along with Gordon Brown's spending plans and it's been blown apart. Britain needs to find other ways of doing business, find ways that give working- and middle-class people a reasonably stable career to aspire to. It's about time, I would say, to go back to a slightly more statist, controlled economy to do things like build houses and get things going. The irony of the times is that this is about one of the most left-wing moments in my lifetime by a mile. Whatever you say, you can't blame what's happened on trade unions or bureaucrats. You can't blame George's empty and shallow and vaguely leftist, vaguely liberal cultural elite. This is high finance running out of control and bringing the roof down on the rest of the country. But you've got a centre-Right movement that isn't very well-equipped to do something different and you had a centre-Left government that let the financiers do it in the first place. 

So, as I said at the beginning, things are going to have to change. It's easy to say we need a different kind of Britain but it's very hard to see how we get from where we are now to there and it's even harder to see who will be a reliable guide. 

GW: To sum up, I would say that I will accept that we probably need different financial arrangements, if you, Nick, will admit that we need a different kind of culture.