EX-FOREIGN OFFICE minister Sayeeda Warsi has slammed “public school” Tory colleagues — and said David Cameron will lose the election unless he attracts support from ethnic minorities.

The Tory peer, who resigned as a minister last week over the government’s failure to condemn the Israeli onslaught on Gaza, laid into members of the privileged Prime Minister’s inner circle, saying they dismissed her as a “brown working-class woman, not good enough” for ministerial rank.

In an interview for the Independent, Lady Warsi said that her party’s efforts to engage with black and Asian voters had declined since she stepped down as Tory chair.

She continued: “The electoral reality is that we will not win outright Conservative majorities until we start attracting more of the ethnic vote.

“The issue is not linked to a particular ethnic vote. It is a broader issue about the party being open to a broader range of views and experiences.”

Lady Warsi’s comments follow a study by think-tank Demos which found that ethnicity is still a major factor in voting intention. Black and Asian voters were overwhelmingly more likely to back Labour.

Unite activist Kate Osamor, who is standing for a seat on Labour’s national executive, said: “If parties are serious about attracting ethnic minority voters, they must do more than the short-lived disingenuous campaigns that we’re used to. We need a less patronising attitude to working-class and ethnic-minority voters.

“Many ethnic-minority voters don’t vote at all — and these are communities which know the importance of voting.

“This doesn’t take place in isolation. Poor voters are feeling disillusioned. We must address this both through addressing unemployment and poverty in these communities and by taking these voters seriously and making sure they are registered.

“The Tories will always struggle as most of their candidates are not from the same background of those whose votes they are trying to get and their values are totally incompatible.

“The privileged few can keep begging us to vote for them but they will never get a critical mass. Until they change the rotten core of their party they’ll never have support from black voters.”