Ex-MP launches attack on 'moronic' Tories

JOHN RENTOUL

Political Correspondent

The former Tory MP Alan Amos, who revealed yesterday he has defected to the Labour Party, today accuses John Major of being the most "incompetent purposeless Prime Minister in living memory".

Calling for the abolition of the monarchy in an article in the Independent, he says that the "cancer of class" in Britain remains as entrenched as it was 50 years ago. "I shall be dancing in the streets when hunting is banned by a Labour government because it will be the first attack on this rotten lifestyle."

Mr Amos, 42, was MP for Hexham from 1987 until he resigned in 1992 after being arrested, cautioned, but not prosecuted for alleged indecency on Hampstead Heath in north London. Today he attacks the "moronic majority" in the Tory party and said he had secretly joined Labour a few months ago and would like to become a Labour MP.

"Now I want to fight for social and economic justice and the Government to play a constructive and enthusiastic part in building a united Europe with a single currency. That's the only hope this country has of a more tolerant and prosperous future. I don't want to remain a member of a foreigner- bashing, minority-hating party.

"These days if you go to a Conservative Party conference the only way you can get applause from the moronic majority is by bashing Brussels, ie foreigners, or by attacking minorities and I find that distasteful," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

Mr Amos has joined a Labour constituency party in east London, but said he had not revealed to local members that he was an ex-Tory MP.

He was educated at St Albans School and St John's College, Oxford, where Tony Blair, now Labour's leader, was a contemporary. "How many Conservative MPs are women? How many non-whites? How many openly gay people?" he said.

He added: "I'm not gay", but said his experiences in 1992 had shown him how minorities were treated. Mr Amos, now a local government officer, lashed out at the behaviour of his former party supporters in Hexham after his arrest.

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