For years Sir Howard Davies has glided from one top job to the next. He is a rare cosmopolitan in Britain’s policy establishment, a technocrat who has worked with equal ease – and success – with politicians of right and left, and in the public and private sectors, around the world.

Yet this week the supremely self-confident jack-of-all-trades, renowned for his quick mind and acid wit, came unstuck. However, his downfall stemmed not from the office politics that classically ends such careers but something much more unexpected yet profound: Britain’s and his own London School of Economics’ unfortunate flirtation with the one-time pariah state, Libya.

The final chapter began on Tuesday evening, when the LSE’s governing body met at its cramped central London campus. The mood was tense. Sir Howard, LSE’s director, was under fire in the media as was the university for having accepted in 2009 a ￡1.5m donation from a charity controlled by Seif al-Islam Gaddafi, the Libyan dictator’s son.