At Business Questions yesterday afternoon, Angela Eagle said: “following on from the Queens Speech, the IoD said the government was beginning to lose the confidence of UK PLC.” Except the IoD did not say that. At all.

They did use the word “confidence” in terms of economic confidence, which was described as “the real key to growth” – a concept a former Shadow Chief Secretary of the Treasury should probably understand. In fact the IoD argued that the best way to build economic confidence is for the Government to go further, faster on deregulation, tax cuts, pension reform, scrapping quangos etc – hardly Angela Eagle’s position. So where did she get the idea that “the IoD said the government was beginning to lose the confidence of UK PLC”?

Well, the only place that phrase has appeared was on the Twitter account of Steve Hawkes, the Sun Business Editor:

https://twitter.com/#!/steve_hawkes/status/200200397602816000

Taking her lines from Twitter is enough of a worry, but from the Sun? Don’t tell Ed…