Baroness Thatcher's policies were "fundamentally wrong", former London mayor Ken Livingstone said today.

He told Sky News the former Conservative prime minister was responsible for "every real problem" faced in the UK today, as he claimed she had led millions of people out of work.

Mr Livingstone said: "Of course she was popular, she was offering people their homes at a cut price. But she didn't build any houses.

"She created today's housing crisis, she produced the banking crisis, she created the benefits crisis. It was her government that started putting people on incapacity benefits rather than register them as unemployed because the Britain she inherited was broadly at full employment.

"She decided when she wrote off our manufacturing industry that she could live with two or three million unemployed and the legacy of that, the benefits bill that we are still struggling with today.

"In actual fact, every real problem we face today is the legacy of the fact she was fundamentally wrong."

He also said that it was to Tony Blair's "shame" that he "broadly carried on" most of her policies.

Mr Livingstone added: "She once claimed New Labour was her greatest legacy and I am not saying she was joking."