Can Britain survive another European crash? It is a truly disturbing state of affairs. Six years after the start of an all-embracing financial crisis that begun on US and British shores, the Anglo Saxon world is again towing the rest of the global economy along in its wake as the consumer of last resort, piling on debt as it goes. The "wrong" sort of growth may be better than no growth at all, which is what there is in the eurozone, yet if it merely returns the world economy to the unbalanced form it was in ahead of the crisis, it's hard to think of it as genuine progress. At one stage, it looked as if an "emerging market" miracle might come to our rescue, providing the sources of growing external demand that might float us from the rocks. But that hope, too, now seems to be fading fast. Mr Cameron is right about the warning lights, but be is completely wrong about the loveliness of low interest rates. These are not a sign of economic resurgence, but of underlying stagnation. Not until interest rates are firmly on the rise again will we know for sure that the UK economy is back on the right track. And that prospect was pushed further out into the indefinite future by last week's Bank of England Inflation Report, which essentially took the view that the economy was still far too weak to withstand even a modicum of tightening. Admittedly, there are one or two glimmers of hope. For most developed economies, the falling oil price is a boon, acting much like a tax cut that puts money back in consumers" pockets. As a rule of thumb, it is reckoned that every $10 fall in the oil price adds 0.5pc to growth in oil-importing countries. For many oil-producing nations, on the other hand, it's a disaster, cutting their revenues precipitously. So reliant have they become on buoyant oil revenues that they cannot even agree the sort of cuts in production necessary to put a floor under the price; this month's meeting of Opec nations in Vienna will agree token reductions, but most probably of insufficient size and intent to make a difference. Few want to suffer the temporary shortfall in revenues that come from major production cuts. Thank goodness for that. The sooner this monstrous cartel is put out of business, the better. As a minor oil producing nation, Britain is somewhere in the middle of these dynamics - consumers benefit from a relatively low price, but North Sea investment and tax revenues suffer. Yet even for Britain it is probably more upside than down. Falling energy prices are a key factor in declining levels of inflation. If the Bank of England is right in forecasting nominal UK wage growth of 3.25 per cent next year, this should in turn allow the first decent increase in living standards since the crisis began. But herein lies a contradiction, for although such forecasts look relatively upbeat, policymakers are not. Official data on Monday confirmed that Japan has entered a quadruple dip recession, with the eurozone chasing hard behind. Last week, it avoided a triple dip by the narrowest of margins. Once-buoyant emerging markets are meanwhile slowing fast. Among the big economies, only the US, and to a lesser extent, Britain, are keeping the torch of growth alive. How are we able to manage this? One thing that has got very little to do with it is what the Government likes to boast about - paying down the nation's credit card bill. Since the start of the crisis, any reduction seen in household and (non-financial) corporate debt has been overwhelmed by rising state debt. All have in any case been cushioned from the effects of their own excesses by low interest rates. Again, I'm not saying this is necessarily the wrong approach, yet it belies the rhetoric. "When we faced similar problems in recent years," Mr Cameron said yesterday in reference to economic stagnation across the Channel, "too many politicians offered easy answers, thinking we could spend, borrow and tax our way to prosperity. Those were the wrong answers then; they are the wrong answers now. We are not going to repeat the mistakes of the past. Fair enough, except that relative to the Continent, Britain is indeed still attempting to borrow and spend its way out of trouble. Despite supposed austerity, Britain will take first prize with Spain this year for the largest budget deficit in the European Union. At a forecast 5.5pc of GDP, it will be nearly double that of the eurozone as a whole. Our current account deficit - the difference between what we import and export - will also be far and away the biggest in Europe. Stagnation in Europe requires Britain to keep policy much looser than it can afford in order to avoid the same fate. It might work for a while, but it can't work forever. The Government has made progress, but not in the way it likes to think. Still, failure to practice what we preach has at least helped Britain avoid the depression-like conditions gripping much of the eurozone. This, regrettably, is small comfort if Europe continues with the current mix of ruinous indecision and deflationary policy. Eventually, Europe's problems will become ours as well. Europe is indeed again "teetering on the brink," yet it is hard to know how Mr Cameron's medicine - spending and borrowing less - would help matters. Certainly, Britain is taking much smaller doses of it than Europe is. There is, however, one big lesson to be drawn from Britain's relative success, and it is this: conjoining nations via monetary union to Europe's dominant economy, Germany, was always a very bad idea.