That was one of my greatest frustrations as a Labour party member, looking in on debates in the House during the 2010-15 Parliament. We could be proud of Labour’s record in government from 1997 to the financial crash. There was unprecedented growth; we ran a budget surplus for four years—that has happened
in only seven of the past 58 years; we lifted half a million children and more than 900,000 pensioners out of poverty, and we rebuilt public services. Yet we were told after the 2010 general election that Labour presided over reckless spending, but George Osborne was the shadow Chancellor who, up to the crash, committed to match Labour spending pound for pound.
How on earth in 2010 to 2015 we allowed revisionist history to take hold of Labour’s economic record will continue to confound me, but we must take that on. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham said, when we left office, the economy was growing and the initial impact of the early Osborne Budgets was to choke growth, scare away investment and suck money out of the economy through the cuts that were imposed. That did not make economic sense or even enable the then Chancellor to deliver his promises.