A TORY politician fled a furious backlash yesterday after attacking a BBC drama that depicted a single mum struggling to feed her kids and branding those forced to turn to foodbanks as alcoholics, drug users and people with “mental health problems.”

Aylesbury Vale District Councillor Mark Winn flew into a rage at the “propaganda” Casualty storyline about a mother-of-two stripped of her benefits via welfare secretary Iain Duncan Smith’s cruel “sanctions” policy.

Angry Cllr Winn was forced to suspend his Twitter account after accusing the broadcaster of “supporting Labour propaganda rubbish,” adding: “The people visiting food banks are those with drug, alcohol +mental health problems.”

In fact sanctions and low income are the top two reasons why people were forced to turn to food bank charity the Trussell Trust.

Together they accounted for over half of the 492,000 referrals in six months — including 176,000 children.

In Saturday’s episode viewers were introduced to desperate Poppy, who in a chilling real-life echo says of her children: “They’re better off without me.”

The words were precisely those used by one of the 80,000 people stripped of benefits for Christmas — as reported by the Morning Star on December 22.

It later turns out that the fictional character has not eaten for five days because she has been sanctioned by Mr Smith’s Department for Work and Pensions.

Veteran nurse Charlie Fairhead, played by Derek Thompson, declares: “It’s the system that’s wrong. It’s unforgiveable.”

But an unrepentant Cllr Winn told the Morning Star yesterday: “I have not expressed an opinion that you would not have got elsewhere.

“I do not believe we have a starvation issue in the UK — that is my opinion and in a democracy I am entitled to it without being called every name under the sun.”

Buckinghamshire’s sole Labour Councillor Robin Stuchbury branded his Tory opponent’s Twitter post “very unwise” and advised him to “rethink what he said.”

“My experience of foodbanks is that most of the problems are to do with a lack of income — mostly caused by government policies that remove benefit,” said Cllr Stuchbury, a Unite union member and agricultural worker for 30 years.