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TUC leader Frances O’Grady will take on the Tories today, warning that their trickle-down economics and trade union attacks are turning off their “natural” voters.
Ms O’Grady will issue her wake-up call to a meeting of the Bright Blue group at Conservative conference in Birmingham.
She will warn their “winner-takes-all capitalism” is hammering middle-class families as well their traditional working-class opposition.
“Wealth isn’t trickling down to the middle classes — it’s trickling up to the super-rich,” Ms O’Grady will tell the Tory conference meeting.
“Middle-class children are facing downward mobility en masse and many will almost certainly end up worse-off than their parents.
“And those people employed in jobs traditionally seen as middle class increasingly find themselves being treated in ways that used to be reserved for those in blue-collar jobs.
“Everyone is now working harder but for less.”
The message blows a hole in the Tory claim to the “party of aspiration” and is likely to alarm MPs in marginal constituencies as they gather for the final conference before the general election.
Ms O’Grady will speak after Prime Minister David Cameron pledged to cut benefits for poor youngsters.
He put unemployed 18 to 21-year-olds on notice that the Tories will force them to work for free or face having their benefits stopped.
Tory MPs, members and pundits alike heralded the latest attack on the vulnerable as “tough” and predicted it will win votes.
But Ms O’Grady highlighted that their policies were turning off their own middle-class voters who are parents.
She said: “They’ve watched their children come out of university with good degrees behind them — usually coupled with huge amounts of student debt — but unable to secure graduate-level jobs.”
Britain’s trade union leader will tell the Tories plans to get tougher on trade union laws will lead to a “middle-class revolt.”
“They know that in these tough times of squeezed incomes, growing job insecurity and the huge divide between the rich and the rest, trade unions are the last line of defence,” she will say.
