Re-brand Tories ‘poverty fighters’

THE Conservative Party needs an urgent change of image to end the public perception that its members are simply “mates of big business,” a West Tory MP has warned.

Plymouth Moor View’s Johnny Mercer told the Conservative think tank Onward that the party should be re-branded as “poverty fighters.”

In his speech, which follows defections by both Labour and Conservatives MPs to form a new independ- ent grouping in the centre ground, he also said younger voters had deserted the Conservatives.

To win them back he said his party had to “walk in people’s shoes, govern with compassion as well as fiscal competence, look for common ground, reject the extremes, ditch the spin, take them seriously.”

Mr Mercer has always dismissed talk that he could be a potential future leader of the Conservative Party, although he has been tipped for the role. His speech will be closely read in Tory circles.

It comes before the start of a week which many believe is the most important in British post-war political history.

MPs will be voting on whether or not to back Theresa May’s Brexit deal and set the course for the nation’s future.

Mr Mercer, a former soldier and something of a maverick in the Conservative party, said the result of the EU referendum showed people were “hungry for authentic, sensible government. Government on their side.”

He said wealth creation was vital, but it should be about creating wealth to bring an end to poverty, rather than “wanting more money for the sake of it”.