Labour leader Ed Miliband declared yesterday that the Prime Minister’s face had turned “as red as a postbox” as he struggled to defend the Royal Mail privatisation fiasco.

Mr Miliband told MPs at Question Time that the sell-off had already made hundreds of millions of pounds for David Cameron’s rich friends in the City.

Shares which floated at 330p were now worth 563p, robbing taxpayers of £1.4 billion in a sale that “nobody wanted and nobody voted for,” complained Mr Miliband.

A third of the shares went to just 16 City investors under a gentleman’s agreement that they would be a long-term investment — but half of these shares had already been sold.

Mr Cameron’s ruddy face reddened still further as he shouted and blustered amid Labour jeers and Mr Miliband quipped: “His face has gone as red as a post box.”

The PM roared: “There are now 140,000 shareholders working for Royal Mail, and there are almost three quarters of a million members of the public with shares.

“These are signs for celebration in our country.”