Campaign launched to make Tories the "workers' party"

David Skelton, who grew up in Consett, will unveil a set of policies designed to shed the Tories’ damaging “party of the rich” tag and grab the support of the low-paid.

The Sunderland AFC fan will launch a new campaign group, called Renewal, with the aim of winning over working-class voters living in Northern towns and cities.

And he will warn David Cameron that only a policy shift – to snatch seats in Labour’s heartlands – can deliver that elusive Conservative majority, in 2015.

Mr Skelton said: “The Conservatives have already changed under David Cameron’s leadership and his changes were enough to give the party its biggest swing since 1931, but not quite enough to push it over the line to an overall majority.

“The party must go further and send out a clear message that it stands up for the many not the privileged few.”

Among the possible policies put forward by Renewal are:

* A higher national minimum wage, by lowering taxes on employers.

* Lower petrol prices, by freezing fuel duty for as long as five years.

* Cheaper gas and electricity bills, by abolishing the European Union’s renewable energy target.

* An end to ‘Rip off Britain’, by appointing a Minister for Consumers to clamp down on utility, train and mobile phone companies.

* More housebuilding, by transferring planning powers from local authority “bureaucrats” to local communities.

* Giving town halls the power to reduce the benefit sanctions faced by the unemployed, to take account of local job losses.

The ideas are contained in a pamphlet, bringing together the thoughts of a group of Conservative MPs, including Hexham MP Guy Opperman and Middlesbrough-born Greg Clark.

There is growing concern about the scale of the “Northern Challenge”, with the Conservatives holding just 20 of 124 urban seats across the North and the Midlands.

David Cameron and George Osborne are thought to be damaged by an image as “two posh boys” and rhetoric that divides people into “scroungers and strivers”.

Other Conservatives fear their party is still struggling to overcome a deep-seated dislike born out of huge job losses during the Thatcher years.

Mr Skelton quit his job as deputy director of Policy Exchange, the Tories’ favourite think-tank, in order to launch his new group.

He added: “As the Labour Party becomes “latte-fied” - and ever more out of touch with its traditional, working-class support base - the Conservatives can fill the gap to become the new ‘workers' party’.”

But Kevan Jones, who defeated Mr Skelton for his Durham North seat in 2010, said: “The Tories are going to have a difficult job explaining their disastrous policies to the electorate of the North.”