Three more weeks like that and I will need to check into The Priory. Watching, listening and reading day after day the outpourings of our political masters and wannabe political masters is enough to drive anyone to the hard stuff — drink or drugs, it doesn't matter which.

It's not our fault, it's their fault, say Labour of the Tories and the Tories of Labour and the Lib-Dems of them both. And besides, we all agree: the City is really to blame.

Ah yes, the greedy, scheming, venal Square Mile. Where would we be without it? To hear many politicians, in a far better place is the answer. Then comes the Financial Development Report from the World Economic Forum, organiser of the Davos summit.

It says the UK is ranked Number One as the world's leading financial centre. Hurrah! But hang on — it also rates us 37th out of 55 for financial stability, precisely because our economy relies so heavily on the City. Those nasty bankers again.

Wait, though, isn't it the job of those at Westminster to create a more balanced structure, one that is not so dependent on financial services? You would have thought so. Some bankers went too far but the fact that Britain finds itself less stable than Bangladesh and Nigeria can't be laid at their door.

Dig deeper into the 365-page report and other details emerge.

The UK is a lowly 31st for burden of government regulation. Before Labour spin doctors rush to proclaim, “there you go, we're not so bad” that's not what it means. The compilers of the study have marked that item so that highest means less regulation and lowest means more, and that makes us 31st. While that puts us ahead of India and Russia, it leaves us a long way behind the top-ranked Singapore, Hong Kong, UAE and Switzerland.

Our infrastructure, about which politicians say little — because improving it is expensive and takes ages, by which time they will be long gone and won't get the credit — is only 24th best in the world.

Businesses and start-ups have been screaming that they can't get any funding and the World Economic Forum says they're right: the UK is 55th for access to credit and 31st for ease of access to loans.

What this shows, surely, is that government efforts to persuade the banks to relax their lending criteria are not working.

Given that two of the biggest providers of business credit — Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds HBOS — are under Treasury control, there should be even less of an excuse.

But talk to the bankers about why they are still tight with their cash and they say they are only obeying orders, that they've been leant upon by the Government to bolster their capital reserves. So, in other words, they're damned if they do and damned if they don't — and responsibility for that confusion must lie with those in charge, in government.

But what makes the study so alarming is how weak the UK becomes once the City is stripped out. In banking, non-banking financial services and financial markets, our scores are excellent.

In insurance, forex, derivative and equities trading we leave the rest of the world trailing. But when our overall business environment score is measured, we're only 12th.

Something clearly goes badly wrong when we move away from finance, out of the City. And that cannot have anything to do with bankers. They may be guilty of many things but creating an economy in which manufacturing and other industries have struggled to flourish and is so skewed isn't one of them.

The politicians have a lot to answer for — although you wouldn't know that from the last three weeks.

One more finding from the study: for public trust in its politicians, Britain is 25th in the world, below the likes of Egypt, Israel and Kuwait...

Labour blowing hot and cold on sell-offs guru Grimstone

ONE person observing today's announcement about the Government's £16 billion car boot sale with more than passing interest is Gerry Grimstone.

The chair of Candover and Standard Life, Grimstone, 60, is the City heavyweight called in by the Treasury to advise on what it can sell and how. I met Grimstone recently. He couldn't tell me what was to be sold, on pain of death - Gordon, it seems, will never allow anyone to spoil his big day.

There was a strong sense of deja vu in seeing Grimstone in such circumstances again — I well remember him when he was at Schroders, playing a key role in Mrs Thatcher's privatisation drive. So what's it like being back? “It's good fun. I try to avoid being a boring old fart.”

Who would have thought it - Grimstone back, doing the same for Labour? “Yes, life is being breathed back into an area that has been moribund for 20 years,” he said, smiling at the weirdness of it all.

But if there is one illustration of the fickle nature of this government it is also Grimstone. Ministers' regard for him, it would appear, only goes so far. Earlier this year, he applied to be chairman of the Court of the Bank of England — the Bank's equivalent of a board of non-executive directors — and his name was one of two selected to go forward to ministers for approval. However, that's as far as it went, as his candidature was blocked. No reason was publicly given. Could it be that a large part of his career had been in banking, and the Government no longer like bankers?

“I was bemused,” he said, diplomatically. He shrugged and added: “It's not as if I'm not a typical City person, in that I've done a big range of things.” Indeed he has. He was a civil servant, under then Labour ministers Barbara Castle and David Owen before moving into banking. And at Standard Life, he's done a good job in steadying the insurer; while at Candover, he's grappled with the crisis facing the private-equity industry.

None of that mattered, though. The job of helping to guide the Bank went to someone who has never been in banking: Sir David Lees, the chairman of Tate & Lyle.

Sunningdale's glorious – but my golf was way off course

THE only blemish on a perfect Saints and Sinners annual charity golf day at ultra-smart Sunningdale was my performance.

How sad and all too familiar those words are. If it wasn't the drive, it was the irons.

If it wasn't the irons, it was the chipping. If it wasn't the chipping, it was the putting.

Occasionally, they did all come together but not enough to propel my team, ably led by John Burns of Derwent Estates, into a position to challenge the winning side captained by Rory Bremner.

Still, the sun shone and Sunningdale was looking at its beautiful, bewitching best.

At the lunch afterwards, Bremner, in ebullient form after his victory, ran through his repertoire of impressions, including a brilliant one of Lord Mandelson at the Labour conference.

The course, the clubhouse — everything about Sunningdale — constitute a golfer's paradise. How does one join such a place? I inquired of a member.

He looked me up and down.

“I think you'll find there's a long waiting list,” he said.