Tristram Hunt condemns David Cameron as ‘low-rent PR man’

The shadow education secretary and Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent, Tristram Hunt, has written a scathing attack on David Cameron in the Observer.

Tristram Hunt, the shadow education secretary and Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent, has written a vitriolic comment piece about the Conservatives in the Observer. In the article Hunt described Cameron as the “frat-boy prime minister” who had “moved on little since his days as a low-rent PR man.”

The insults were thrown in response to what Hunt describes as a “highly personalised attack” on him made during David Cameron’s conference speech.

In the speech, Cameron accused Hunt of “hypocrisy” because of his privileged upbringing and suggested that Hunt and the Labour Party wanted to “restrict advantages” because they are opposed to the Tory’s free school policy.

Hunt hit back saying: “the attack on me, my family and my upbringing speaks volumes about the man himself.” He also said Cameron did not invest the office of prime minister “with the dignity it deserves" following revelations that Cameron had accidentally revealed details of his conversations with the Queen.

On the topic of free schools, Hunt said that Labour would do away with the scheme because it had “damaged standards, put children at risk and wasted tens of millions of pounds.”

Hunt is a historian who was privately educated before studying at the University of Cambridge while Cameron attended Eton and Oxford. Hunt said that the reason he was singled out in Cameron’s speech is because of a “psychological refusal by the Tory party to believe that anybody called Tristram could or should be a member of the Labour party.”