Tony Blair: That the economy grew for a decade under Labour was down to luck not Gordon Brown

The Daily Mail reports a quite astonishing quote from Tony Blair:

“Mr Blair, replying to a question after delivering a lecture at Yale University in Connecticut, said: ‘It is true that we had ten years of record growth when I was prime minister.

‘I have, unfortunately, come to the conclusion that it was luck.’”

Having not heard the audio one can’t tell if Blair was joking, as his spokesman claims he was, or what the context was. But Brown’s boasts about his own economic record have always been exaggerated; a whole bunch of those record quarters of consecutive economic growth came under the Tories and Brown was operating in a very benign global economic environment. Expect this Blair line to join the ‘age of irresponsibility’ and “saved the world” in the list of quotes that the Tories love to taunt Brown with.