Cameron: I won't take lectures from Miliband about low-paid workers
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Version 0 of 1. David Cameron has intensified the Tory assault on Ed Miliband by saying Labour has no right to portray itself as the champion of the low-paid after it wrecked people’s lives in the crash. In an impassioned and at times angry speech to a Tory rally in Bath, the prime minister told the Labour leader never to “dare lecture” the Conservatives about helping the poor after the Labour government had lavished knighthoods on disgraced bankers. Related: The Tory economic plan is NOT working, at all - sadly, their PR war is Jabbing his fingers to make his point, Cameron told the rally: “Do you know what drives me so mad in this election? It is when they [Labour] say our party is for the few not the many. “Ed Miliband, I remember who got hurt in the crash. It wasn’t the bankers, they got away with the bonuses and the pensions and the knighthoods you gave them. I tell you who got hurt – it was the low-paid, the people who lost their jobs, the families that couldn’t make it through. Don’t you ever dare lecture us about how to help the many not the few.” Cameron’s speech, which saw him briefly turn red with anger in a crowded hall of a secondary school, marked a stepping up of what he has called his “passionate prime minister” campaigning. He indicated he has taken on board the advice of Stephan Shakespeare, the co-founder of the YouGov polling company, who told Cameron in his Times column that he would only win over Ukip supporters if the Tories reached out to those who felt left behind by the economic recovery. The prime minister put himself on the side of the victims of the crash and tried to sound less boastful about the Tories’ achievements on the economy. He said: “I am not saying we have solved every problem in our country. Of course we haven’t. But over these last five years we have worked with the British people through a long-term plan that has made a big difference. “We had no growth, we’ve now got the fastest growth of any major economy in the western world. We had mass unemployment, we’ve got 2 million people back to work. We had the biggest budget deficit almost anywhere in the world. We cut it in half. That’s our record. Related: Labour overspending did not trigger financial crash, says senior civil servant “Now let us remember their [Labour’s] record. Do you remember what happened in the great crash? Do you remember what they did? They spent all the money, they put up the taxes, they whacked up the borrowing, they wrecked our economy – all the time saying they’d abolish boom and bust. That is what they said.” Cameron said: “What you’d get under Labour is a weak prime minister propped up by SNP vote by vote, measure by measure, issue by issue. You don’t have to take it from me. They have told us that. That is what Nicola Sturgeon has said. Alex Salmond has said he would write the first Labour budget. “The problem is simply put. The SNP don’t want the Westminster government to be a success. They don’t want the UK to be a success. They don’t want the UK to exist. That’s why we can’t have them running our country. “Now I don’t raise this with no answer to the problem. I have the answer to the problem. If we win 23 more seats this problem won’t exist because we will have a Conservative government that will look after working people in every part of our country.” An egg was thrown at the prime minister as he arrived at Hayesfield secondary school but it missed its target. |