DAVID CAMERON cruelly misled poor youngsters yesterday by promising them “affordable” homes that will actually cost up to £450,000. 

The Prime Minister desperately tried to detoxify the Tory brand as he brought a conference overshadowed by anti-cuts protests to a close.

 But Mr Cameron’s big offer to “generation rent” had been completely discredited before his speech had even begun. 

Mr Cameron announced a starter homes scheme as part of what he branded a “national crusade” to boost home ownership.

“When a generation of hard-working men and women in their 20s and 30s are waking up each morning in their childhood bedrooms — that should be a wake-up call for us,” he said. 

But housing charities warned that the Tories’ so-called affordable homes could cost £250,000 outside of London and £450,000 in London. 

Generation Rent, the charity representing the very people Mr Cameron claimed he will help, savaged the policy. “Starter homes will do nothing for renters who are really struggling,” said spokesman Dan Wilson Craw.

“Under the Prime Minister’s plans only 200,000 relatively well-off households will get to buy a home. 

“But there are five million households who will remain stuck in private rented housing, paying out half of their income to their landlord.”

The policy will not actually see the government build a single home.

It simply scraps laws that force developers to offer some new homes for social rent, allowing them to flog the lot. 

Shelter chief executive Campbell Robb stormed: “You don’t solve an affordability crisis by getting rid of the few affordable homes we’re building, yet that’s exactly what this policy will do.”

Shameless Mr Cameron also kept a straight face as he vowed an “all-out assault” against poverty.

Apparently oblivious to the pain his welfare cuts are causing, the privileged PM attempted to resurrect “compassionate Conservatism.” 

His speech was unmatched on moralising about Britain’s “deep social problems” and hyperbolic promises of a “great British take-off.”

He refused though to confront the cut to tax credits that is about to plunge low-paid workers and poor families into poverty.

Straight-talking Unite leader Len McCluskey said the speech will “offer little reassurance to those bracing themselves for the impact of Tory cuts.”

NASUWT teachers’ union leader Chris Keates described it as “code for yet further attacks on the poorest households.”

And Labour’s Jonathan Ashworth said Mr Cameron’s rhetoric was undermined by his actions.

“For all the talk of making life better for people, the truth is David Cameron is doing the opposite,” he said.

“You can’t claim to be in the common ground of British politics when you’re cutting the tax credits working families rely on, leaving three million of them on average £1,300 a year worse off.”

Mr Cameron also failed to fool people whose lives have been devastated by Tory cuts, hundreds of whom demonstrated outside as he spoke.

Spending cuts did not deter the PM from boasting about his determination to blow £100 billion on four new Trident submarines and yet more on new fighter jets, helicopters and drones. Mr Cameron also vowed to finish off the outsourcing of England’s school in the next five years.

“My next ambition is this,” he said. “Five hundred new free schools. Every school an academy and yes — local authorities running schools a thing of the past.”