David Cameron, the leader of Britain’s opposition Conservative Party, warned on Tuesday that the British government runs the risk of defaulting on its national debt if debt levels continue to rise.

He called government plans to double the debt to £1.4 trillion (us$2.3 trillion) in the next five years a “disgrace.”

This year alone the government is projected to borrow £175 billion. That is 12.4 percent of gross domestic product, the highest amount of any G-7 nation.

In May, ratings agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded its outlook for Britain from “stable” to “negative,” warning that Britain could lose its aaa credit rating as its national debt nears 100 percent of gdp.

Britain’s Conservative Party is concerned by such figures. “You can get to a level of government debt where, not that it becomes certain that people will cease to lend you the money, but you start running risks of them demanding higher premia, higher interest rates. Or you run the risk of not being able to meet your obligations,” said Cameron at the Royal Society of Arts in London.

To qualify his remarks, he said, “I have never predicted that is going to happen,” referring to his warning that default was still a risk. “But as government borrowing goes up and up and up, you start running that risk. You should not be running that risk …. I’m not saying it’s going to happen, but the government, with the levels of indebtedness they have, they are running those risks.”

Some accuse Cameron of scaremongering. As a politician, clearly his statements are designed to bring in votes. But does he point to a real problem? Are the British and American economies really going down? For more information on this economic crisis, see our article “Can the Financial Flames Be Stopped?”