As New York awoke on Thursday, I bade a hasty farewell to a minister. “So this was what the great crash of ’29 was like,” he said sympathetically. I had a nest egg in an American bank whose shares had tumbled the night before and, amid the usual conflicting advice, decided to transfer it to safer shores as soon as doors opened for business.

On the telephone the man at customer service said he couldn’t finish wiring my money because he had suddenly been called to a meeting. With the immaculate bad timing usually encountered only in a theatrical farce, a colleague then let drop that an announcement on the selfsame bank was due. I confess, I shivered.

Across the country my insignificant brush with casino capitalism was being replicated but with serious, sometimes tragic, results. Down the road from this newspaper at Canary Wharf, 5,000 jobs with Lehman Brothers were heading south; HBOS employees trembled for their jobs and unemployment figures leapt by more than 80,000. Hard times undoubtedly lie ahead. But could this new age of insecurity throw sinking Gordon Brown a lifeline?

Although polls showed the Conservatives pulling away from Labour to a 28-point lead, Brown was crafting a fightback strategy. Soon Downing Street let the world know the prime minister had met Sir Victor Blank, the nonexecutive chairman of Lloyds TSB, and approved the deal to rescue HBOS, giving the necessary waiver from antimonopoly rules.

No 10 was being seen – as publicly as possible – to act to save the British banking system. The Tories might privately sneer about “an accidental meeting at a cocktail party”, but coverage was good. For once the prime minister was talking directly to our concerns.

Brown’s protégé Ed Balls, the schools secretary, came out fighting, in part for his friend Gordon and in part because he wants to be at the forefront of the battle inside Labour to raise his leadership profile one day. No other putative Labour leadership contender can compete with the prime minister’s breadth of experience in steering the economy, he pleaded. A fair argument, whatever the criticisms. The rise of David Miliband, the foreign secretary, may be fanning the flames of Balls’s zeal. How galling it would be if the ultimate glittering prize fell to an Oxford rival from one’s own youthful generation. Watch this space.

The mood music in the country is to curse the so-called “masters of the universe” and “vulture capitalists”, not the prime minister, for the turmoil. It may change. But, for the moment, it has stopped the momentum of the “ditch Brown” campaign that was running so well a week ago.

There are the makings of a political narrative here for the prime minister. Brown will argue, “I know what went wrong and I know how to put things right”, and pray the voters show a grudging respect for his record against the untested claims of David Cameron and George Osborne, the shadow chancellor.

But a degree of honesty and humility is required amid the sub-Churchillian rhetoric about a united party and nation.

You don’t have to be one of those angry people who place all the blame for the great crash of 2008 on the former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Alan Green-span – still officially an economic adviser to Her Majesty’s government – and his sorcerer’s apprentice, Brown, to harbour the odd doubt.

Inadequate supervision of the banks may have been built into chancellor Brown’s division of responsibilities between an independent Bank of England and Financial Services Authority. Eddie George, the then governor of the Bank, almost resigned over it. As for the prime minister’s claim to “clean up the City”, it was his partial treatment of private equity that led one financial titan to hang his head in shame – well, almost – and say: “I pay less in tax than my office cleaner.”

The Tory charge – that Brown has left “no rainy-day money in the kitty” after a spending splurge – also sticks, even if some other complaints look a bit oppor-tunistic. Would a Conservative government have looked a rampant boom in the face and told everyone to cool it? I doubt it.

Still, Brown will probably have an easier ride at the annual get-together in Man-chester as a result; a ceasefire of sorts. He has one last chance to reestablish his authority. If he can’t duplicate the success of Cameron’s walkabout speech last year, which heralded an amazing Tory come-back, he can at least go down fighting honourably for what he believes.

A good and therefore modest conference speech laying out his priorities in language Mr and Mrs Everyman can understand is required.

First, he should stop the terrible boasting: it was that nonsense about putting “an end to boom and bust” that made Brown so easy a target this year. It’s also wrong for him to claim he is the man who saved the country – this government trails behind activist Washington. Instead the prime minister should start preparing us for blood, sweat, toil and tears. Borrowing is set to soar. If he won’t prune state spending, tax rises will follow.

Brown’s Labour critics say they have heard all this stuff about a fightback before. But they will remain silent, for now. “Most people are dreading conference, with the eyes of the media focusing on us. But even if nothing happens, it’s only the calm before the storm,” warnsa dissident.

Connoisseurs of political nastiness cherish the memory of Iain Duncan Smith’s last conference as Conservative leader. There was peace on the conference floor and the usual standing ovation as he gave his “quiet man” speech – not in front of the children, you see – but many a purple-faced, expletive-laced briefing. Within weeks, IDS was gone.

As for the argument that it is wrong to drop the pilot during a national emergency, it didn’t do Margaret Thatcher much good. She was bundled out as Britain prepared to fight the first Gulf war. Look at Charles Clarke’s article on page 23 where he repeats his call for a contest. Brownites will riposte that the former home secretary is Labour’s equivalent to Millwall FC – nobody likes him, but he doesn’t care.

Brown’s subtler critics intend to turn his weapons against him. “You do need unequivocal leadership in a crisis but you can’t have this with Gordon,” charges one opponent, adding: “He needs to use the global situation to say, ‘back me or sack me’, but I think he is incapable of doing that.” Indeed, the prime minister has ruled out a contest. Last week a rough-and-ready poll of Labour activists revealed that the party wants him to go.

Inside the cabinet Blairites have complained about an attack-dog strategy that would focus on the Tories while refusing to address the government’s own inadequacies. Other ministers, Blairites now loyal to Brown, argue for a platform that addresses the electorate’s fears about globalisation in all its forms, from immigration and crime to job security and the need for an enabling state.

Below stairs, however, the rebels want action. “How can cabinet ministers go on to mutter in private and say nothing in public?” asks one. “It is not tenable for a minister to keep on saying this guy must go and and just sit there.” The Glenrothes by-election in Scotland, as yet unsched-uled, may be the next station of the cross on the road to Calvary.

The common wisdom is that the party in the round won’t accept Miliband, the most popular choice in the poll of activists, as leader. But I wouldn’t be quite so certain. Nice Alan Johnson may be too modest to run and Jack Straw as ever is enigmatic, so Miliband’s odds narrow if there is a cabinet revolt.

The markets have rallied but there may be more bad times round the corner. The prime minister will try to turn them to advantage and fend off a challenge. Taking action to curb short-selling and other financial monkey business must come as a real pleasure to a born socialist puritan. It reminds him of the good old days before new Labour had to suck up to the City.

Brown prides himself on his expertise in globalisation. Now he must convert all that knowledge into something tangible. Something that reassures those of us left shivering at the end of a telephone line.

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