Most important of all, Britain still has its own currency, which it uses to raise all but a tiny fraction of its sovereign debt. In practice, there is therefore virtually no chance of default. In extremis, the Bank of England can simply print more pounds, an option not open to individual eurozone nations. The damage this approach inflicts on both the currency and cost of living is another matter, but default is most unlikely. For the European periphery, it's quite different. To raise debt in euros is tantamount to the disaster of raising money in a foreign currency. The amount of fiscal contraction required to sustain the principal eventually becomes unbearable.
Yet alongside the differences, there are also some marked similarities. Much is made by supporters of the idea of continued fiscal expansionism of the fact that those following this approach have not in practice had to pay the penalty of higher interest rates that would seem the logical downside result.
Even in the US, where breach of the public debt ceiling set by Congress threatens imminent default, Treasury yields remain extraordinary low. In Japan, with nearly two decades of ever more mountainous public debt accumulation now under its belt, rates are closer to zero than anywhere else in the developed world.
Unfortunately, the UK is much closer to Europe, both geographically and fiscally, than it is to the US or Japan. There is a sense in which Japan simply borrows from its citizens rather than taxes them, while the dollar's reserve currency status virtually guarantees international appetite for US assets. Neither of these things applies to the UK.
But what makes Britain particularly vulnerable to fiscal crisis is the size of its financial sector, which has liabilities that are a multiple of several times GDP. In this regard, the UK is very much an outlier compared to other major advanced economies, including the US and Japan. In fact, it's got much more in common with Ireland or even tiny Iceland.
Britain dealt with its banking crisis far more effectively than either, yet the risk of the banking sector's vast liabilities shifting on to the public balance sheet, in the same way as they have in Ireland, is still high. It wouldn't take much to shatter international confidence in the UK's ability to repay its debts.
As a result there is a double risk to the UK of sovereign and financial market contagion. Taking public, household, corporate and financial sector liabilities in aggregate, the UK is far more highly indebted than almost anywhere else.
With the economy already so fragile, the consequences of any appreciable rise in market interest rates for the UK would therefore be utterly catastrophic, far worse than the damage the austerity measures threaten to inflict. The UK simply has too much debt; it won't be safe until it has worked some of it off.
The better match for the UK is not Greece, Ireland or Portugal, but the rather larger Spanish economy, where according to estimates aired at Fathom Consulting's Monetary Policy Forum on Wednesday, it requires a rise of only a further two percentage points in yields to put public debt on a wholly unsustainable trajectory. Spain is much closer than generally thought to following Portugal over the precipice.
Low growth and austerity is part of the price that has to be paid for insuring against such risks. Like Rachel Lomax, a former MPC member who spoke at Fathom's event, I'm no fan of the expression "there is no alternative", or "Tina" for short. In public policy there are always alternatives, and Ms Lomax may be right that some "re-profiling" of the austerity programme could be marginally helpful to medium term growth prospects.
But it's only fiddling at the edges. The problem is not lack of demand as such, but in a world economy where there's plenty of growth right now, a structural overhang of debt and an economy that fails to make the things people actually want to buy. There's said to be massive spare capacity in the UK right now; if so, how come global demand isn't rushing to absorb it? The reason is obvious; it is not at root lack of domestic demand, but lack of competitiveness.
Fiscal conservatism, far from hampering the recovery, provides one of the key building blocks for sustainable growth; unfortunately, it's going to take some time.
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