If you think this country is up the creek financially, take some comfort in knowing that we're not quite at the bottom of the barrel. The CIA World Factbook ranks the UK 22nd in terms of ratio of debt to GDP.
As you might expect, the UK is ranked in a better position than the basket case countries (Iceland, Greece, Japan, Zimbabwe), but it is surprising to see that Malta, Austria, Canada and Singapore all have a higher debt to GDP ratio than that of the UK. Rather bizarrely, too, little St Kitts and Nevis, with a population smaller than Hereford, ranks third between Japan and Lebanon.
The ranking sheds perspective on the contrast between Old World and New. In particular it is striking how thenewly democratised countries of Eastern Europe have avoided the levels of debt that now beset their Western neighbours.
Among the countries with the lowest debt to GDP are Estonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania and the Czech Republic. By contrast, those most in hoc are Greece, Italy, Belgium, Portugal, France and the UK. New Europe is in far better shape than Old Europe.
This wider perspective sheds light on several misapprehensions. First, we must avoid the mistake of assuming that, because some people are very angry about spending cuts, their country's government must also be deeply unpopular.
In Greece, for example, the ruling party, PASOK, enjoys 42 per cent plus vote share and prime minister Papandreou has twice the approval rating of his nearest rival. Yet this in a country which claims to have slashed its state deficit by almost 40 per cent compared to last year.
Second, we cannot make a causal link between a nation's indebtedness and the (un) popularity of its governing party. Of the 13 countries that rank in the 50 per cent most indebted, only six have a negative popularity score. That is despite some of those countries (like Greece) having endured some considerable pain in their efforts to tackle their deficits.
We are still early into the process of fiscal stabilisation so this may well change over the coming year but, so far, political meltdown has not followed fiscal strangulation.
This suggests some important lessons for the UK context. First, the coalition government cannot rely solely on the argument that Labour failed to fix the roof while the sun was shining. The British public knows that the country is in financial diffi culty but equally people regard many problems like the banking collapse as being outside the government's control.
The slogan "we're all in this together" actually undermines the prospect of shoving all the blame onto one's predecessors.
Second, the voting public knows full well that every country is hurting at the moment, and will judge both the level of blame to be ascribed to Labour, and the reasonableness of the coalition's cuts, against that benchmark. To that end, riots in Athens, protests in Lisbon and a Spanish general strike are actually rather helpful to the coalition government.
Voters in the UK will stomach a certain amount of pain, provided the results are judged to be worth it. In a poll of British voters taken in May, 60 per cent said they expected the coalition government would be effective in its efforts to reduce the deficit. Many fewer, by contrast, expect the coalition to be effective at improving the NHS or reducing crime.
The coalition's entire justifi cation has been predicated on its ability to be competent where its predecessor was not. If it fails to deliver on its pledge to cut the deficit substantially, the public will be forgiving.
The coalition government is also on the back foot when it comes to fairness. Polls consistently show the coalition as being more sympathetic to the needs and interests of the rich than of ‘ordinary people', and many proposed spending cuts are thought unfair.
It is not spending cuts per se for which the Tories and Lib Dems will be punished. Rather, voters will be very grumpy indeed if we hit a second wave of recession, if the cuts are seen to disbenefit the vulnerable unduly or if government debt is not reduced substantially.
Andrew Hawkins is executive chairman of ComRes
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