David Cameron rose to speak at his party’s economic summit yesterday and duly announced the previous speakers had left him desperate to reach for the Samaritan’s helpline.

But it’s not all doom and gloom, the Conservative leader protested. Amid the dire economic forecasts, rising food and fuel prices and a tightening squeeze on credit, Mr Cameron attempted to offer a ray of hope by saying there was at least one area where he and Gordon Brown could reach political consensus.

“I don’t believe it’s impossible to try to get some political consensus...about tight rules on fiscal policy”, he said, referring to the Government’s rules on taxation and spending.

“That’s the good news."

Mr Cameron has previously said that he would back an independent assessment of fiscal rules, but yesterday he appeared to go one step further, saying he would back independent assessment “as a bare minimum” and hinted at a more forward-looking framework. Although in true Cameron style, it was more nudges and winks and less detail.

Mr Cameron’s beef, of course, is that it is all well and good for a Chancellor to play judge and jury in the boom times - “I will tell you when the economic cycle starts and finishes” - but what happens when you hit bad times and you suddenly wake up to find a budget deficit of 3 per cent at the precise moment you need all the spare cash you can lay your hands on?

Clearly “something went wrong” Mr Cameron noted. More proof of that will doubtless come today as the Treasury reports its spending figures for June. According to a survey of 17 economists by Bloomberg, Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, will post a deficit of £7.4 billion, up from the £6.36 billion shortfall last year.

Mr Cameron was right, though. The morning at the Cass Business School in London, where the Tories hosted a standing room- only Economic Summit, was light on cheer. Martin Weale, director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, told us that Britain’s productivity was among the lowest in the developed world and that our level of savings was “well below the amount we need to run the economy on a sustainable basis”.

"We’ve been living in a 'fools paradise' and we’re now suffering the consequences", he said.

Michael Saunders, chief economist at Citigroup, predicted that inflation would rise to over 5 per cent this year and that, contrary to the Chancellor’s reassurances, some of our inflationary problems had a “homegrown element”.

Roger Bootle, of Capital Economics, said that while the rest of the world — China, India, Latin America and even Japan — were doing well, that Britain would not benefit from it because the majority of our exports are tied not to those regions with the biggest demand but to America.

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