Now we’re party ofthe workers
PM moves to shed image that Tories only care about the rich
DAVID Cameron will today tell the first all-Conservative Cabinet for 18 years that they represent ‘the real party of working people’.
After years of being accused of running a privately-educated ‘chumocracy’, the Prime Minister more than doubled the number of comprehensive- educated ministers at his top table.
In a ‘blue collar reshuffle’ he promoted figures who have championed policies aimed at the working class, blue-collar voters that gave Margaret Thatcher three election victories.
The Prime Minister will also today try to eat into traditional Labour support by unveiling plans for two million new jobs, to push more off welfare and into work and help working families with childcare costs.
Big winners in his reshuffle included Sajid Javid, the son of an immigrant bus driver, who was made Business Secretary. Priti Patel, whose parents fled Idi Amin in Uganda to open a shop in London, became employment minister.
Campaigning backbench MP Robert Halfon, the architect of a five-year freeze in fuel duty, who has suggested the Conservatives should change their name to the Workers’ Party, will attend the Cabinet as Tory deputy chairman.
There was also promotion for comprehensive schoolboy Greg Clark, who becomes Communities Secretary, and David Mundell, a state-educated Scot who enters the Cabinet as Scottish Secretary.
The shake-up means that 43 per cent of Cabinet ministers were educated in comprehensive schools, up from just 21 per cent of the coalition Cabinet in 2010.
The reshuffle bore the fingerprints of George Osborne, Mr Cameron’s preferred successor, who saw a string of protégés winning big promotions. They included Mr Javid, Mr Halfon and Amber Rudd, who have all been parliamentary aides to the Chancellor, and ex- deputy chief whip Greg Hands, the new Chief Secretary to the Treasury.
As the Daily Mail revealed yesterday, a string of powerful women was promoted – shattering the Tories’ traditional ‘male, pale and stale’ image. They included Miss Rudd, who was made Energy Secretary, Anna Soubry, who will attend Cabinet as minister for small business, and Penny Mordaunt, the first female armed forces minister.
Liz Truss remains Environment Secretary.
Boris Johnson will also attend the Tory political Cabinet – but not take government decisions while he is still Mayor of London. Mr Cameron sent shockwaves through the BBC by making John Whittingdale the Culture and Media secretary. The Thatcherite veteran has said the licence fee is ‘worse than the poll tax’.
The Prime Minister is understood
‘Always better off in work’
to have been deeply angered by what he saw as partisan coverage of the election campaign by the BBC, and its threat to ‘empty chair’ him if he refused to take part in leaders’ TV debates. Addressing the first meeting of his new Cabinet today, he will say: ‘I want everyone around this table to remember who we’re for.
‘Every decision we take, every policy we pursue, every programme we initiate, never forget: we’re here to give everyone in our country the chance to make the most of their life. The pundits might call it “blue collar Conservatism” and others being on the side of hardworking taxpayers.’
Mr Cameron will say that a Queen’s Speech expected on May 27 will include a bill to promote full employment and create three million new apprenticeships.
Another bill will include immedi- ate action to reduce the household benefit cap from £26,000 to £23,000 a year to ensure people are always better off in work and end a ‘something for nothing culture’.
A new scheme will see young people with no work experience required to take part in training or work placements or see their benefits removed. Working families will benefit from a doubling of their entitlements, with three- and fouryear-olds receiving 30 hours of childcare a week paid for by the State.
This, ministers say, will save parents up to £5,000 a year.
The Government will also introduce ‘tax-free childcare’.
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