The Tory PR machine was in full flow at its annual conference this week claiming that, as a nation, the debts we’ve racked up in the so called good times have left the country virtually bankrupt.

The country now needs to take a good dose of fiscal medicine, that we are now experiencing the hangover after the party. Or in fact numerous other conference clichés to basically say the good times are over, now everyone is going to have to suffer for them.

The level of debt this government has run up – currently £175 billion or increasing at around £300,000 a minute - is completely unsustainable and if something isn’t drastically done about it this country’s growth will be severely handicapped for a generation.

But how much of this is actually true and not just political spin to position the Tories as the party of austerity who are going to save this the country from complete economic meltdown?

Well, let's start with the facts rather than the spin. Britain went into the current recession with one of the lowest debt levels in the developed world. According to the International Monetary Fund, Japan's debt in 2008 was 198% of national GDP, Italy's was 104%, Germany's was 76%, France's was 65%, and the US's was 61%.
Britain's was just 43%.

Since the recession has started to bite every country has increased borrowing massively and yes its true Britain had increased borrowing more than most.

But given our low starting point we are still no worse than a mid table borrower when compared to other wealthy nations with 75% borrowed against the country’s annual income or GDP.

According to the opposition leader and his shadow chancellor this level of national debt makes a country "bust."

If this is true than some of the most successful economies in the world are bankrupt, and have been for a long time. On this measure Japan would have been bust since the 1970s along with both the US and Germany several times over during the last 30 years.

And the paradox for those nodding their heads in agreement in conference hall is this.

On this measure of 75% of debt to income Britain has been "bust" for almost the entire history of what could be termed parliamentary democracy

Since William Pitts was prime minister in the 18th century there have only been two periods when national debt has dipped below current levels, the end of the 19th century and from the 1970s until today. So, virtually the entire period of the industril revolution and the building of a an empire that covered a quarter of the globe was done when debt was higher than it currently stands.

Ok so it’s 75% of national income but let’s take that down to personal level. Most people with a mortgage in this country will have debts far in excess of 75% of their annual income. The average is to take out a loan of up to three time’s annual salary.
So would someone with a mortgage that is 300% of their annual income consider themselves ‘bust’. Of course not, a debt is managed by paying regular installments and this goes for governments as well as individuals

These are not difficult arguments to explain but they do take longer than a ten second soundbite.

The Tories are simply tapping into the fact that the majority of the population are incapable of listening to and comprehending an issue that takes longer than 30 seconds to explain.

So when Mr Cameron says £175 million is a massive figure – which it is – and if we don’t sack thousands of public sector worker to pay it off as quickly as possible it will be a catastrophe – which it won’t – then everyone simply nods and agrees with him.

He plays on the fact that public finance figures are so massive these days nobody really puts any thought into understanding what they mean.

If you asked the average voter in the street what you could buy with £175 billion they wouldn’t have a clue. In fact they would probably struggle to tell you how many zeros it had. This is no slight on your average voter merely an observation on how far removed the figures politicians talk about are from the average man or woman in the street.

The Tories misreading of the economic situation far from doing good, could in fact make the current economic situation worse.
Rather than aid recovery according to Professor Paul Krugman, the winner of this year’s Nobel Prize for economics, cuts of the scale being talked about could actually bring the recession back with a vengeance. Plunging the country into a full scale depression with unemployment of four million plus that really will take a decade to recover from.

Of course no debt is better than debt of any size. But debt has and will continue to be the norm for all countries and the sooner this is explained and accepted by the voting public the quicker we will be able to get rid of it in a managed and calculated way.

A repayment plan that doesn’t involve the Tories slash and burn tactics and the untold social misery it will undoubtedly bring.