Tories are back to nasty old ways says Labour

David Cameron has overseen the “Crosbyisation” of the Conservative Party, allowing it to return to its “nasty party” roots, Labour’s Angela Eagle said yesterday.

The Shadow Commons Leader criticised the Tories for serving the interests of the rich over the British people. She said the party’s guiding principles were those of its election strategist Lynton Crosby, who is also the founder of lobbying firm Crosby Textor.

Rather than solve problems, Mr Cameron has been causing havoc by exploiting the nation’s problems, Ms Eagle told an audience in east London.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Three years after Mr Cameron spoke out about fixing broken politics and restoring trust in the political system, Ms Eagle said: “The task of politics is to provide real answers to the problems Britain and the British public face.

“And today those problems are only too evident: wages squeezed, prices rising year on year on year, and a profound sense that for most hard-working families today, Britain is not working for them.”

Ms Eagle was at the site of Mr Cameron’s 2010 speech, before the general election, where he spoke of fixing “our broken politics” in the aftermath of the MPs’ expenses scandal. Speaking at the University of East London yesterday, she took aim at the Lobbying Bill which comes to the House of Commons next week.

She asked if the Lobbying Bill will “make things better or worse”, “whether it will improve our politics, or degrade it further”.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

She said: “David Cameron was right to say in 2010 that this was the next big scandal waiting to happen. And it has happened, to him. This Bill should be introducing a real register of lobbyists. Instead, by covering just one per cent of the industry it is just a ‘lobbyists’ charter’, that would have done nothing to prevent the very scandals the Prime Minister warned against.”