Grant Shapps and Tory hypocrisy

Grant Shapps, the Conservative Party Chairman, today tweeted this personal attack on Miliband:

Now, regular readers will know that I am no defender of Miliband but here I feel honour bound to point out the hypocrisy of Shapps and this Tory attack.

1) Grant Shapps is a millionaire just like Ed Miliband, and it is worth highlighting, like most of the front bench of the Conservative Party. Miliband’s opposite number, David Cameron, is reported to be worth some 3.8 million pounds.

2) Cameron, is hardly ‘a man of the world’. He graduated in 1988 in (what else) PPE from Oxford. Where he then went onto work for for the Conservative Research Department between September 1988 and 1993. He then went onto become a special advisor to first the Chancellor and then the Home Secretary. Only then did he move out of politics (by how else when you’re a PPE graduate than by working his contacts – James Robinson writes a damning examination of Cameron’s limited time in the private sector). Even during this ‘private sector time’ though he was already – at the age of 27 – looking for parliamentary seats to stand in. If the Tories want to suggest that lack of experience in ‘real life’ is an issue they really should look at their own leadership first.

3) Lastly, was it not Cameron that famously said he wanted to end Punch and Judy politics? If so, this seems an odd way of going about it!