A financier whom I know calls me over the weekend about the Irish financial crisis. “Jon”, he says, “I trust you know that 80 per cent of the Irish banking crisis was caused by a handful of property developers taking massive punts on the housing and construction market?”

He points out that Channel 4 News has filmed and transmitted shots of the swathes of unfinished housing estates in Ireland now lying empty, abandoned, and open to the winds. “Ireland”, my friend adds, “is a small society even now. It’s high time you examined the links between that small handful of property speculators, the bankers, and individuals holding influential posts in the Irish government”.

He’s right of course, it’s time I did. Right in Ireland, right in Spain too where even bigger estates of unfinished property litter the landscape. Might he also be right here in the UK? My eye catches a list in the FT of European banks exposed to the renewed and expanded Irish debt crisis. Coming in top of the pile our own beloved Royal Bank of Scotland – yes the one of which we the people own 84 per cent – with Irish bank debt exposure of close on £4bn.

One intriguing difference between Britain’s banking crisis and the Irish situation is that our banks were playing a much greater international role. Exposed not only to our own runaway consumer indebtedness, but to, and involved in, what was going on in just about every wayward economy from California to Greece.

Yet as with Ireland, a relatively small group of people were involved at the higher echelons. As in Ireland they had remarkably close relationships with the UK political establishment of the time.

If Ireland is a “small society”, how small is the Edinburgh society in which critical elements of the RBS management swam? How big is the City of London society in which other leading bankers and financiers swam?

In any other walk of life, if so grave a mismanagement of activity had taken place on so catastrophic a scale, there would have been massive public inquiries. Beyond powerless parades in front of MPs’ Select Committees, there has been all but nothing in terms of true public investigations with the force of law behind them.

There have been “closed door” investigations by the Serious Fraud Office – leading to how many prosecutions? Others have been carried out by the Financial Services Authority and the Bank of England.

But beyond the odd “resignation” and removal – the state is dependent upon exactly the same structures and individuals to get us out of this mess as got us into it. And that of course is why none of them can go to jail and none of them can be seriously public paraded. We need them too badly to carry on.

And that is as true of the UK as it is of Ireland, Spain and the rest. It’s just that in Ireland the power links are just that bit more clear cut. I must do some more digging. My financier friend is right. I wonder what’s in it for him?

So to policy now that the personality of the prime minister has, for the time being, been parked.

So what to expect? Mostly obviously, I guess, we look to proposed changes in Post Office ownership, now to be kicked into the long grass.

A possible end, too, for the ID scheme (estimated cost: £5bn), and the abandonment of the Trident nuclear weapons upgrade (£20bn).

What else? How about the abolition of the House of Lords and the Privy Council (£100m) to be replaced by an elected 100 seat senate?

And while we are at it, a cut in the House of Commons, down from 650 plus to 400, moneys saved redistributed among remaining members for proper pay scales, allowances and staffing.

And then there’s the economy.

UK indebtedness as a percentage of gross domestic product outstrips most industrialised nations, with the exception of Japan.

Meanwhile, unemployment is set to rocket – LDV yesterday shed 850 jobs with a further 3,000 at risk at suppliers and dealers. Today Cheltenham and Gloucester is shedding 1,500.

Inflation beckons too. The way Britain’s monetary system is set, interest rates will go up.

Make no mistake, no amount of green shootery (the Purchasing Manager’s Index suggesting growth in demand for product last week; enquiries for houses up this week) will stop us slipping into very desperate times.

This is certainly the view of a very senior mandarin, with whom I spoke yesterday. He says those at the top of the Treasury tree see a few very, very dark years to come.

Meanwhile the Bank of England is engaged in an unprecedented exercise in money printing.

I only got an Economics A-level at Scarborough Tech, so I have to trust those who know.

And those who know tell me prepare for the very worst. Do not spend what you cannot afford and prepare as never before, for the morrow.