CLUELESS Tory Alec Shelbrooke attempted to minimise the fallout from the defection of Baroness Warsi by claiming she was “embarrassing herself” by “spreading out into different areas of criticism.”

The reality is that the ex-minister’s weekend interviews in the bourgeois press are an embarrassment to the government.

Ms Warsi’s sudden realisation that the Conservative Party is not representative of the British people may come a tad late for most Morning Star readers, but the substance of her accusations stands.

Yes, the Tories are dominated by white people and few ethnic minority citizens would consider voting for them.

Yes, the Tories are dominated by men and Labour’s narrow overall poll lead is much stronger among women voters.

Yes, the Cabinet is run by a bunch of posh-boy public-school prattlers and speaks for a tiny Establishment elite, not Britain’s working-class majority.

On the left we are well aware that elitism, prejudice and privilege are not aberrations of the Conservatives’ current leadership but integral to the party’s nature.

But the increasingly narrow social base of the Tory leadership does tell us something about Britain.

In a country where inequality is growing, and an ever-smaller minority gobble up an ever-larger share of the wealth we all create, it is natural that the party of the elite will speak for fewer and fewer people.

The Conservatives are the political wing of the City of London. 

Their priority is the transfer of wealth from working people to fat-cat financiers and, while the occasional individual from a working-class background such as Ms Warsi will sell out their class and fight for the enemy, it will always be dominated by the ruling class it serves.

This ought to mean, as Ms Warsi has warned her former colleagues, that the Tories can’t win elections. But sadly we cannot take this for granted.

All Britain’s main political parties are dominated by people from privileged backgrounds — and the Labour Party which was founded to give working people a political voice is failing to live up to that promise.

Far too few MPs of any party come from working-class backgrounds. And the knock-on effect is that our entire Parliament is divorced from Britain’s people.

The “Westminster bubble” has become a cliche but signs that MPs live in an alternative reality to the rest of us are everywhere — from their casual attitude to stealing public money through dodgy expenses claims to the sinister cross-party consensus on policies which are deeply unpopular in Britain as a whole. 

Renewing Trident, privatising public services and dancing to Washington’s tune in supporting the terror state of Israel are cases in point.

Highlighting how out of touch the Tory leadership is will not do Labour any favours if it cannot show working people that it is different.

This will require a dramatic shift in the policies currently adopted by Ed Miliband’s shadow cabinet.

Labour must ditch its absurd commitment to austerity spending plans set out by a Con-Dem coalition hell-bent on wrecking Britain’s public services.

It must grasp the nettle and tell long-suffering passengers it will take the railways back into public ownership.

And it must take steps to convince workers that a Labour government will reverse the wage freezes, benefit cuts and attacks on trade unions which are hammering our communities and set out an agenda for change.

Otherwise whoever loses the election, labour will not have won it.