David Cameron has clashed with Tory chairman Grant Shapps over campaign plans for next month’s local elections amid fears the party is on course to lose 500 seats.
A Cabinet source said the Prime Minister had been ‘distinctly unimpressed’ after Mr Shapps was asked to address a private meeting of Conservative ministers on preparations for the final fortnight of campaigning up to polls on 2 May.
Mr Cameron demanded to know why, when he is doing at least half a dozen campaign visits a month, some members of the Government appeared to be planning to do none at all.
Clash: Tory party chairman Grant Shapps, left, and Prime Minister David Cameron, right, have clashed over campaign plans for next month's local election
‘The Prime Minister had asked Grant for a detailed plan but he seemed to be busking it.
'There didn’t seem to be a convincing timetable of who would be where when and some Cabinet ministers were down to do absolutely nothing,’ the source said.
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However, a source close to the Conservative chairman insisted Mr Cameron’s anger had not been directed at Mr Shapps, but at colleagues who were not pulling their weight in the run-up to the elections.
‘There was displeasure expressed at the whole Cabinet that people weren’t getting out there.
Optimistic: UKIP party leader Nigel Farage has predicted it will win seats in each of the 34 councils where elections are being held
'The idea Grant was bawled out is totally disingenuous.’
Home Secretary Theresa May is understood to have been among those who defended her record, telling the political Cabinet meeting that she regularly tacked political visits onto the end of official government ones, meaning they were not recorded by Conservative Central Office.
The tensions over the Tories’ readiness for the elections emerged as Mr Cameron launched the party’s campaign in Warwickshire, campaigning having been postponed by the death and funeral of Baroness Thatcher.
He insisted local authorities had a ‘clear moral imperative’ to keep council tax down. The Prime Minister insisted the only ‘real choice’ was between the Conservatives and Labour, saying his party would fight for ‘the services on our streets’, ‘the pound in your pocket’ and ‘the future of our country’.
Voters go to the ballot box on 2 May for 27 county councils and seven unitary authorities in England, as well as two Mayoral elections. In all, almost 2,400 council seats are up for grabs.
The Tories are defending seats last contested in 2009, when Labour was in power and deeply unpopular under Gordon Brown, and are braced for the loss of 500.
In a ten-minute speech to local party faithful at a community sports club in Nuneaton, Mr Cameron insisted: ‘The choice is between: do you want Conservative councils keeping bills down or do you want Labour to rack up your bills?
‘That's what this election is about.
‘We’re fighting for the pound in your pocket, in fact – we’re fighting to keep it there. Because Conservatives get something. It’s your money. Every single pound has been hard-earned - early mornings, late nights, long commutes, time away from the children, hours put in on the factory floor, the shop floor, the hospital ward.
‘And then you come home and there, on the door-mat, is the council tax bill. There is a clear moral imperative to keep that tax down.
‘That’s why we said to councils of all colours: even when money is tight, we’ll give you this extra cash to freeze council tax.’
An increasing number of councils have been rejecting Government requests to freeze the tax, but Mr Cameron said most of those were Labour local authorities.
‘There are some councils – some Labour councils – who just don’t get it,’ he said. He attacked Labour councils for spending taxpayers' cash on expenses and allowances as though it was ‘their money’, describing the thousands of pounds spent by Durham council on clothing allowances as ‘Geordie Armani’.
Conservative vice chairman Bob Neill said the elections were ‘going to be a tough call for us and I'm not going to pretend otherwise’.
‘It would actually be silly if I didn't say we’re starting from a high base,’ he told the BBC’s Daily Politics programme.
‘I'm not going to put numerical figures on it. We're fighting these elections separately from either general elections or European elections, and that will affect turnout and that makes a big difference.
‘We're starting from almost a record high base. It's going to be very tough to defend all those seats, despite the very good work our Conservative councillors have done...
‘At the time these elections happened four years ago, the Labour party was 11 per cent behind us in the polls. We had an 11 per cent lead. Most of the polls would suggest that position is reversed. So you would expect something like that to show up in the election figures.’
He warned disaffected Tories thinking of voting for UKIP they would simply allow Labour and Lib Dem councillors to win.
‘Splitting the vote in any election if you’re tempted towards UKIP because you want a firm line on things like our relationship with Europe and some of the other things that concern people – letting in Labour and the Lib Dems – is actually cutting off your nose to spite your face,’ he said.