Campbell lays into wealthy Cameron’s pay-cut for MPs

As the Labour party appears to drift towards inevitable defeat at the next election, at least one old warhorse is refusing to go down without a fight. Alastair Campbell, who masterminded Tony Blair's rise to power, has launched a scathing attack on David Cameron and, unexpectedly, called for an increase in MPs' salaries.

It was the BBC's decision to film Cameron in his kitchen, having breakfast and chatting with wife Samantha, that got the old spinmeister worked up. "David Cameron's performance was beyond parody," writes Campbell on his blog, before accusing the Tory leader of delivering "a speech of such soaring populism that even I, no stranger to the occasional populist touch, found myself squirming in embarrassment."

He is referring to Cameron's announcement that he would freeze MPs' salaries and save £5.5m a year by abolishing other political perks like cheap beer at the Commons. "Here we are, looking at post-economic crisis public sector debt figures on a mammoth scale, and Dave would like us to think he can deal with it by adding 50 pence to the cost of Vince Cable's tomato salad in the Commons canteen," sniffs Campbell.

He then gets stuck into some good old-fashioned Tory baiting that suggests he had been reading the reports in the morning papers about a speech on Tuesday by Labour MP John Cruddas, in which he called for the Labour party to adopt a radical left-wing stance to avert disaster at the polls.

"Cameron, with millions in the bank, does not have to worry about the pay cut," writes Campbell. "Nor do several of his similarly loaded frontbench colleagues who would prefer to get back to the days when politics was the plaything of the wealthy."

To stop that happening, Campbell calls for a "politically difficult" increase in salaries to encourage politicians of all backgrounds to enter parliament.