Ed Miliband has called for an immediate G20 summit to chart a way out of the economic slump, insisting that David Cameron and other world leaders renounce collective austerity and instead commit themselves to a “global growth plan”.

The Labour leader claims that the world is facing a “poisonous cocktail of economic peril” and bemoans a collective failure of political leadership. Mr Miliband accuses David Cameron of “standing on the sidelines”, although Barack Obama, US president, and Angela Merkel, German chancellor, are more often criticised in financial circles.

Mr Miliband, writing in the Financial Times, believes that world opinion is beginning to shift towards his own view that too much austerity is part of the reason for the slowdown in developed economies, citing the views of Christine Lagarde, new head of the International Monetary Fund.