As Ed Balls takes to the stage to try and pretend that his party has an economic credibility, the facts just do not fit the rhetoric.

Only four per cent of candidates standing for Labour at the next election think Gordon Brown’s government spent too much money.

Even after he left the country in the worst possible position to weather a global economic crisis, 85% of the next generation of Labour MPs believe Gordon’s spending was “about right”.

Only one in 25 believes Labour was spending too much, despite claims by Miliband and Balls that they had learned their economic lessons.

The survey by ComRes for the Sunday Politics, and revealed in Guido’s Sun column yesterday, also finds that 7% think that Britain is too generous to immigrants. A stunning 89% think our current system of unrestricted immigration from inside the EU is “a good thing”.

So much for Ed Miliband’s admission that Labour had “got it wrong” on immigration.

UPDATE: There was nothing but silence on the fact that Labour were running a boom-time deficit from 2002, but some faux contrition from Balls in his speech.

“The truth is we should have regulated those banks in a tougher way. It was a mistake. We should apologise for it.”

“We should have had tougher rules on immigration from Eastern Europe – it was a mistake not to”

Shame the next generation of Labour MPs do not agree.