Dave’s swipe at PM on youth vote

DAViD Cameron has risked infuriating Theresa May by publicly urging the Tories to come up with a more ‘inspiring vision’ for young people to counter the threat of Jeremy Corbyn.

in an interview with the Evening Standard – which is edited by Mr Cameron’s former chancellor George Osborne – he said Theresa May had to do more to capture the youth vote.

The former prime minister, who quit as soon as he lost the EU referendum last year, warned the Conservatives risked ‘slipping backwards’ by moving away from the liberal agenda he championed as leader between 2005 and 2016.

Mr Cameron spoke to the paper after chairing a board meeting of patrons of the National Citizen Service scheme, which he founded. He said: ‘it is very important that the Conservative Party doesn’t slip backwards. it only succeeds if it is a party of the future. Modernisation isn’t an event. it is a process.

‘A political party should be asking itself all the time, “Am i properly in touch with and reflecting the society and the country?”

He added: ‘i want us to go on being the open, liberal, tolerant party we became post-2005 because i think that was part of our success.’

Asked whether any of his former Cabinet colleagues could benefit from the kind of outdoor leadership courses which the National Citizen Service provides, Mr Cameron said: ‘if it involved crossing a very, very dangerous river on a raft, i can think of a few i’d want to strap together.’

The ex-Tory leader said that the party needed to push their idealistic vision to counter Mr Corbyn’s drive for younger voters.

‘We on the centre-Right side of the argument have to have just as inspiring a vision – a more inspiring vision – of how you build not just a strong economy but a strong society and a better life,’ he said.

But Tory MP Nadine Dorries said: ‘ What Theresa May has done is more inspiring than anything David Cameron and George Osborne ever did – as evidenced by the fact that more people voted for the Conservatives under her than ever voted for those two.

‘it’s an unedifying spectacle of two posh boys getting together to bully the Prime Minister.’