I can't believe how both TV presenters and Labour speaker after Labour speaker let Tory speakers away with the "historically we are the fiscally responsible ones" argument in the run up to the election. The stats just don't seem to show that. Since Thatcher came to power there have only been 6 years when there was a surplus and 4 of them have been under Labour with only 2 under the Tories! If you discount the figures since the 2008 credit crunch (a massive and rare world event) then yes Labour may have had a big deficit but it was no worse than John Major's was and they average out almost exactly the same with Labour's figures only being slightly better than the Tories.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/oct/18/deficit-debt-government-borrowing-data#img-1