I just don't believe that anyone with half a brain cell can fail to understand the difference between deficit and debt. Deficit is spending too much down the pub every month. Debt is having a mortgage.
And there's nothing wrong with debt as long as you can manage it in bad times as well as good.
To say that the Tories inherited a good growth rate and then trashed it is a bit like saying a car was running very sweetly just before it went over a cliff.