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Labour MP Ian Lavery injected a dose of reality yesterday following a top Tory’s attempt to rebrand his hard-faced right-wing party as the workers’ party.
Tory chairman Grant Shapps made a bizarre speech at his party’s HQ, declaring: “The Conservatives are the workers’ party.”
He claimed that the Tories were “genuinely a mass movement” with 174,000 members and 600,000 people following Prime Minister David Cameron on Twitter.
“The Conservative Party is on the side of working people,” insisted Mr Shapps.
Minutes later, Mr Lavery intervened at Commons question time to protest that private health companies with strong links to the Conservative Party had won NHS contracts worth about £1.5 billion.
Mr Lavery demanded publication of a full list of private health-care companies that had made donations to the Tories.
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt faced derision from Labour MPs when he retorted: “There is a difference between donors to the Conservative Party and donors to the Labour Party.
“Our donors do not write our policies.”
The Conservative chairman’s clumsy attempt to rebrand himself as a workers’ champion was also thrown into doubt by complaints among Tory backbenchers that the party’s next election manifesto is being composed by a tightly-knit group of Old Etonians.
Mid Derbyshire Tory MP Pauline Latham told the Financial Times that she was worried about the party’s image.
Another Tory MP complained: “There are six people writing the manifesto and five of them went to Eton. The other went to St Paul’s.”
The five Old Etonians who will draw up the 2015 election manifesto are the London mayor’s brother Jo Johnson, Rupert Harrison, minister Oliver Letwin, Mr Cameron’s chief of staff Ed Llewellyn and Mr Cameron himself.
The old St Paul’s boy is Chancellor George Osborne.
Mr Shapps proclaimed in his fanciful speech that former Tory prime minister John Major’s path from Brixton to Downing Street should be held up as “a symbol of our party.”
He added: “Sir John Major campaigned for what he called a classless society.”
Mr Shapps rather spoiled his case by going on to enthusiastically quote Mr Cameron’s famous howler that “we are not here to defend privilege — we are here to spread it.”
