Cameron tactics slammed by minister

12 April 2012

A senior Government minister has launched a highly personal attack on Tory leader David Cameron, accusing him of using "photo opportunities and warm words" to distract from his "risky and destructive ideological agenda".

Treasury Chief Secretary Yvette Cooper - a close ally of Gordon Brown - said "Cameronomics" was a mixture of contradictory policies and tax and spending plans that did not add up.

Writing in The Guardian, she said: "The Conservative leader hopes to distract us with frisbees, floral shorts, and photo ops.

"But a serious look at his policies reveals an approach which is at best confused and at worst would be deeply damaging for our economy.

"Cameronomics is emerging, in which photo ops, warm words and conflicting promises attempt to distract from a risky and destructive ideological agenda."

She claimed that Mr Cameron had a tendency to duck difficult questions, sending out different messages to different audiences.

"He has tried to confine policies to vague populist promises, from tax cuts to more prisons, to solving family breakdown, without getting drawn on delivery. But dig deeper and what you see is not quite what you get," she said.

On the economy, she said that Mr Cameron was promising to cut taxes, increase spending and reduce borrowing all at the same time.

"Faced with calls to make the sums stack up, Mr Cameron reverts to slogans - 'sharing the proceeds of growth,' or 'living within our means'. When pressed, he concedes this means sticking with Labour's spending plans."

Her article appeared to mark the start of a Government fightback after a summer dominated by speculation over whether Mr Brown will be ousted from No 10 in the wake of a series of devastating electoral setbacks culminating in the loss of the Glasgow East by-election.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in