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The Tory election campaign has suffered a hammer blow after a recording of John Major savaging David Cameron’s Britain emerged.

Speaking at the exclusive Tory Reform Group annual dinner, the former PM attacked Cameron’s failure to tackle growing inequality, poor educational standards, and to reach out to ethnic minorities in the UK.

In a devastating assessment Major said: “We need to acknowledge the fact we have a pretty substantial underclass and there are parts of our country where we have people who have not worked for two generations and whose children do not expect to work.

“How can it be that in a nation that is the fifth richest nation in the world, that in the United Kingdom we have four of the poorest areas in Europe?

"By Europe I include Eastern Europe in that question.”

The recording of Major’s speech, delivered only eight days ago, comes 24 hours before voters go to the polls in the closest election race for a generation.

(Image: WireImage)

Tickets for the £150-a-head dinner - held at the Royal Over-Seas League in St James St, London - included a Champagne reception and a three-course meal plus cheese.

The Tory Reform Group’s President is Kenneth Clarke and its patrons include Michael Heseltine, Michael Howard, Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Douglas Hurd.

It is not known if they were present at the dinner.

In a further embarrassing judgement Sir John also admitted the “quality of education” in Britain is not good enough.

Sir John was wheeled out by the desperate Conservatives three weeks’ ago in an attempt to shore up their faltering election campaign.

But his comments could be seen as a list of reasons for not voting for Mr Cameron on Thursday.

Jon Ashworth, Labour’s shadow Cabinet Office minister, said: “This is an astonishing admission of David Cameron’s failure right from the top of the Conservative Party.

“And it’s doubly embarrassing for the Prime Minister given just a few weeks ago the Tories wheeled John Major out in support as part of a desperate effort to shore up a failing campaign.

“Even the Tories know that this government has failed and has nothing to offer working people.”

In the talk on April 28, Sir John said the Government “cannot be proud” of Britain’s place in the global education tables.

“There two or three problems that we know are important.

"The quality of education in our cities is immeasurable and we cannot be proud of where we are in the education tables of quality education around the world,” he said.

A 2013 study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found British schoolchildren were lagging behind those in the Far East.

The UK was ranked just 26th for maths, 23rd for reading and 21st for science when tests were sat in 2012.

By contrast Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan were among the top 10 countries in every academic disapline.

The former PM was asked to say what Britain would be like in 10 years’ time. In a lengthy answer, he raised concerns about the Tory plans to keep increasing the retirement age.

“Those of us who are white collar workers no doubt can work for a quite a long period of time, beyond 65 or even 70.

"But suppose you are blue collar, or a brick layer, or a labourer, or a dockworker or miner.

"You can only do that job for those extended periods because the sheer physical effort would be impossible for them. And there are complexities like that I think we have to look at,” he said.

And he criticised his own party for failing to reach out to the black and minority ethnic community.

“We have to look, particularly at our relationship with the ethnic minorities. It is not remotely goodish.

"We have to understand that and we have to act about that. And I think we have to confront what has gone wrong in the past,” he said.

Sir John’s comments contradict Mr Cameron’s recent claim the Tory-led government had made “good progress” on education.

“What we have done as a country is we’ve improved our education system,” the PM said last month.

(Image: PA)

Mr Cameron also claimed his government’s policies had lifted people “out of poverty.”

The former PM is the latest Tory grandee to speak out.

Former Chancellor Nigel Lawson last week attacked the Conservatives for making “expensive and unwise” election pledges.

And Kenneth Clarke recently hit out at George Osborne for writing “blank cheques” for billions of pounds in unfunded spending commitments.

He said the “silly” pledges could wreck a “fragile economy.”

Meanwhile, former Labour leader Neil Kinnock has raised fears “shy Tories” - Conservatives too embarrassed to tell pollsters how they will vote - could change the result on polling day.

Lord Kinnock, who lost the 1992 election to John Major despite being ahead in the polls for most of the campaign, said there was a “danger” some shy Tories could emerge.

“There’s something in the ‘shy Tory’ theory. How much there is now? I don’t know because it is emphatically not 1992,” he told the New Statesman.

But he added: “There might be some shy Labour around too, by the way.

"People who are pretty secure but are bothered as good citizens about the fractures in our society and, in their ultra-polite circles, would not openly profess to voting Labour but nevertheless know which side they’re on.

"I don’t know how many of those there are but there are some.”