This week’s Times/Populus opinion poll suggested that the meltdown boost for Gordon Brown’s personal rating has faded. But there is rather more to these latest data than simply a restoration of the Conservatives’ double-digit lead.

An interesting syndrome has come to light, and I am dubbing it ‘this depression is going to be very bad for Britain – but I’ll survive’. There is now what the researchers call a gap between personal optimism and public pessimism.

What can this mean?

It could mean any number of things: far too many people still just carrying on carrying on. Figures from elsewhere showing those in serious debt extending credit still further back this up. It might also be that those with the time to stop and answer a number of impertinent questions are clearly the least worried.

Equally, it may mean people don’t believe (yet) that they will share the same fate as Woolworths employees – upon whom they have always looked down.

But as a long-time market researcher, I think there is an additional and very important explanation that is entirely plausible.

The majority of British people are not entirely stupid. They are still in touch enough with reality to know that the worst outcome is unlikely to mean destitution in any real sense. And they are grounded enough to know that the public finances are in a far, far worse state than their own. Thus their concern is as much for the country of their birth than it is for themselves.

Some key statistics in this study support such a notion. If, for example, you feel that all the folks actually (or likely to be) running the country are cluelessly incompetent, you would indeed be concerned for its fate. Gordon Brown is, on a ten-point scale, currently at 4.97 on ability to respond to and deal with the crisis. David Cameron scores 4.94. Or – put another way – both alternatives are equally unpalateable. Such a score among soldiers going into D-Day, for example, would not have given much comfort to Eisenhower and Montgomery.

On a scale of 0-100, respondents to the poll scored concern about the risk of losing their jobs at 53.5, having to take a pay-cut at 58.4, and security of their savings at 59.4. But while anxieties about the rising cost of living (pretty obvious really) were at 74.5, other scores at that level were less personally directed: overall effect on Britain of a long recession on 72.5, high government borrowing and untenable national debt on 69.9, and the risk of hyper-inflation at 69.6. Of course, money-printing could well lead to personal ruin: but a worthless mickey-mouse currency is as much a matter of national pride as personal disaster.

Lib Dems would do well to take note of this. People are still, I suspect, willing to see a fairly big fall in living standards if it means that Banana-Republic status is avoided. Even in 2009, being British means something to us.

I do not mean by this playing the cynical patriotism card. Rather, we should stress once again the importance of our friends and neighbours when everyone’s back is against the wall. When times are tough, communities come into their own. If the Libdems are about anything, they are about devolving power locally, and preserving community values.

Brown goes on endlessly about global problems requiring global solutions, but this is drivel. What we need is more belief that individuals and communities can indeed influence their own fate.

* John Ward is the owner and editor of www.notbornyesterday.org, a satire and advice site dedicated to promoting new ideas, better ethics and true reform of our constitution, economic model, and community policy objectives.