The renewed crisis in Greece has given George Osborne another chance to perpetuate the myth that Britain would be bankrupt without his spending cuts. But the Chancellor's politicking disguises the reality that the UK, unlike Greece, can afford to meet its debts over a sustained period of time. According to the International Monetary Fund, the average maturity of UK sovereign debt is 13.8 years, compared to 7.8 years for Greece, 6.6 years for Portugal and 7.0 years for Ireland (the country that Osborne once described as a "shining example of the art of the possible").

Indeed, as the graph below shows, the UK's debt profile is longer than that of any other major economy. What this means in practice is that Britain is not forced to refinance its existing debt constantly. As such, even though it ran one of the largest deficits in the world last year (£141.1bn, or 9.6 per cent of GDP), the UK issued less debt than the United States, Canada, Japan, France and Italy. Moreover, because Britain, like Japan (whose public debt is 220 per cent of GDP), does most of its borrowing at home (73.3 per cent of GDP), it is less exposed to the vagaries of the foreign bond markets.

Yet there is one big similarity between Britain and Greece. They were both among just five EU countries to suffer negative growth in the final quarter of 2010 (the others were Portugal, Ireland and Denmark). The April review from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) suggests that things could be even worse than thought. The NIESR is predicting growth of just 1.4 per cent this year, below the official forecast of 1.7 per cent.

The Chancellor may avoid a double-dip recession, but an anaemic recovery now seems inevitable.