It's very hard to feel worried about dire economic forecasts when they are presented by Paul Johnson.

The brilliant and informal young director of the Institute Of Fiscal Studies delivered his research with such cheery optimism that we might be forgiven for not taking it seriously enough; dozens of charts and statistics, ineluctably demonstrating the scale of our present woes, were occasionally interspersed with a large picture of a pint of beer.

His talk was billed as The Coming Of The Age Of Austerity, which you might not reckon on attracting much of a Saturday night audience, but the Ropetackle was packed with a thoughtful crowd whose questions stretched the scope of his work.

All present appreciated the rarity of independent financial studies, unsullied by political spin or populist agenda, even if the facts made uneasy reading.

No longer is it possible to pretend that our party has all the answers and the other party got it all wrong and in any case, our party belongs to an international scene over which we have limited control.

There was some good news, along with the jokes and the beer. As Paul Johnson reminded us, we aren’t Greece.