Ok, so it would be fairly serious but not necessarily as ‘monumental’ as some of the scaremongerers would have us think. According to former Bank of England policy maker David Blanchflower that is…

Bloomberg: “We have to be concerned about that, but no one has well- enumerated what it would actually mean if we did,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg Television yesterday. “I’m not so sure it would actually be quite as monumental.”

Blanchflower said the cost of borrowing in Italy, rated four levels below Britain at A+ by Standard & Poor’s, is “not that much higher.” The yield on the two-year U.K. government bond was 1.153 percent at 8:34 a.m. in London, while the equivalent Italian security yielded 1.322 percent.

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Still we wouldn’t be quite so blasé about the effect on Britain’s international standing as an economic power. Or at a more mundane level, too pleased about the probable effect on exchange rates and overseas holidays. Because if things get that bad, we’re sure as hell going to need them. Even if we can’t afford them.