Minister demands apology from Miliband after stats blunder

The Tories are very keen to sabotage Ed Miliband’s big speech about rebalancing the British economy, which is probably a compliment to the Labour leader as it suggests that they think he might be onto something. Both parties are certainly engaged in a localism arms race at the moment, arguing that they’re the party that really trusts voters and wants to give them back the power over their own lives.

But Miliband appears to have made a bit of a statistical error which is allowing his opponents to create a bit of a sideshow to distract from the launch of Lord Adonis’ final report on growth. In his speech, the Labour leader said ‘independent experts say four fifths of all new private sector jobs created since 2010 are in London’. Matt Hancock has already sent a cross letter to the UK Statistics Authority complaining about this stat, and he’s now written to Miliband directly.