A Liberal Democrat minister who was secretly taped saying voters should not trust David Cameron has said he was “embarrassed” by the publication of his comments and made clear he hoped to keep his job in Government.
Paul Burstow said he was sorry at the way his remarks, made to undercover reporters from the Daily Telegraph posing as constituents, had been construed and insisted that the Prime Minister had his “full trust”.
The care minister was the latest in a string of Lib Dem ministers to be caught out making candid comments about their misgivings about the coalition, including Business Secretary Vince Cable, who was stripped of some of his responsibilities after saying he had “declared war” on media tycoon Rupert Murdoch.
Mr Burstow told the undercover reporters who attended a surgery in his Sutton and Cheam constituency: “I don’t want you to trust David Cameron.”
Meanwhile, local government minister Andrew Stunell said he did not know where Mr Cameron stood on the “sincerity monitor”.
And David Heath, deputy leader of the Commons, suggested Chancellor George Osborne “has a capacity to get up one’s nose”.
Mr Heath said: “I mean, what I think is, some of them just have no experience of how ordinary people live, and that’s what worries me. But maybe again, you know, that’s part of our job, to remind them.”
Transport minister Norman Baker said he did not “like George Osborne very much” and compared his own position in the coalition with that of South African MP Helen Suzman, who fought the apartheid regime from the inside.
“She got stuck in there in the South African parliament in the apartheid days as the only person there to oppose it… she stood up and championed that from inside,” he said.
Mr Burstow told the reporters: “I don’t want you to trust David Cameron… in the sense that you believe he’s suddenly become a cuddly Liberal. Well, he hasn’t. He’s still a Conservative and he has values that I don’t share.”
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