Comment: UK's debts following coronavirus borrowing could be worse

How bad are the UK national debt figures? Plainly, they are not good, but there’s a slight temptation to assume we’re worse off than almost anywhere else, and this is simply not so.

Today’s figures show public sector net borrowing rose to £128 billion between April and June. That’s the biggest deficit in one quarter since anyone thought to count.

Overall, the national debt is one government order of paperclips away from £2 trillion. (For clarity: that’s a lot).

But it could be worse. At least seven major countries are expected to have higher government debt as a ratio to GDP by 2022. They are Japan, Greece, Italy, Portugal, the US, Spain and France.

That suggests, not that we are on our uppers, but that we could easily borrow more if we thought that the prudent thing to do.

Some in the City like to say that today’s government borrowing is tomorrow’s tax increase, but that isn’t always the case. If the spending is targeted right and the economy grows like it should, you can just about get away with it.

In a recent paper the clever lasses (and lads) at Capital Economics asked: how will the fiscal costs of the crisis be dealt with?

They offer several possibilities including “helicopter drops”, or debt monetisation in the jargon – turning the borrowing into cash, in effect.

That’s controversial and probably risky.

Capital’s favoured option is this: tolerate it. Just live with it.

That’s got to be right. Our debt is a problem, but not one that needs an immediate solution. We can get to it later, once we’ve survived.