The starting point for this paper is the fantastically good economic figures, referred to by the anonymous Treasury official. They represent, without doubt, a true Golden Legacy that was handed over from the outgoing Major Government to the Labour Government under Tony Blair in May 1997. There is little doubt that the economy was, at that time, performing very well indeed. The Treasury official was not exaggerating. The question that this paper seeks to answer is how the Labour Government’s eight years of stewardship has affected the performance and health of the economy they inherited from the Conservatives.
