Tory chiefs labelled 'ultra-right nutters'

Charles Clarke, the Labour Party chairman, launched a bitter attack on the Conservative leadership yesterday, branding its front bench as "nutters" driving the party to the "ultra-right" of politics.

He broke the all-party truce to make an astonishing attack on the Tory leader. He said the party had made a "completely stupid choice" in electing Iain Duncan Smith and accused the Tory leader of driving talented politicians out of politics.

Mr Clarke told members of the Parliamentary press gallery that Mr Duncan Smith was "more extreme, more ultra-right, more dislocated from the position of the electorate than his predecessor William Hague. I don't understand how they can do it.

"The party was wrong to choose Duncan Smith. I think [he] was wrong to choose the Shadow Cabinet he has and ... when he puts kind of known nutters in the operation you think, 'Well blimey, what kind of world are we living in?'"

Mr Clarke described Neil Kinnock's efforts to reunite senior members of the Labour Party during the 1980s. "All the serious people in the party came together and said, 'How do we work together to address this crisis in which the Labour party found itself?'

"The contrast with the [Tory] Shadow Cabinet could not be greater. Looking at the ... serious people who are political players but are not in the Shadow Cabinet, the shadow Shadow Cabinet is a much higher calibre group of people."