He and his finance minister, Gordon Brown, stuck to their predecessors’ public-spending plans, for example. In Labour’s first nine years of governing, public expenditure as a proportion of GDP was lower than in the comparable Conservative period.
布莱尔继承了强劲的经济发展势头，而且平心而论也没有毁掉它。他本人及其财政大臣戈登·布朗一直坚持奉行前任的公共支出计划。在工党执政的最初九年间，财政支出占GDP的比例甚至比保守党开始执政的那几年还要低。