He now earns a basic salary of £74,962 as the MP for Mansfield.



Bradley, who at 28 is regarded as a rising star in the party, wrote the post under the headline: “Public sector workers: They don’t know they’re born!”

He argued that employees in the public sector shouldn’t complain about their pay: “If you think your job or your pay isn’t good enough for you, quit! There are millions and millions of other people who will quite happily take your burden off your hands! If you think you deserve better pay, then get a job with better pay. If you don’t feel capable of getting a job with better pay then be grateful for the one you’ve got!”



“The same can be said for many of the unemployed,” Bradley continued. “‘Oh, I’ve got a masters degree, I’m not working in a shop’ – Well if a shop’s the only place that will have you then you’d better get yourself writing out some retail based CVs!”

“Sometimes people don’t know they’re born,” he concluded.

The pay of workers such as nurses, police, teachers, and firefighters is a major political weakness for the Conservatives, and gave Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party one of its most effective attack lines during last year’s general election.

Austerity is one of the key reasons many young voters see the Conservatives as toxic. In June, four stories about Tory MPs cheering the defeat of a Commons amendment to increase the pay of emergency service staff were shared online more than 500,000 times, according to a BuzzFeed News analysis, and posts criticising austerity are regularly among the most viral political content.

Some Tory MPs believe that lifting the freeze on public sector pay and convincing those employees that the Conservatives are committed to protecting public services is integral to improving the party’s appeal to voters under 40.

Bradley was elevated to vice chair for youth at Conservative headquarters this month as part of May’s new year reshuffle.

He is already under fire after BuzzFeed News revealed on Tuesday that he had written a blog post urging unemployed men to have vasectomies.



On Wednesday, Theresa May's spokesperson was asked about Bradley's post about the unemployed. The spokesperson said Bradley "has apologised for those comments" and that "it is right that he did so".

Asked whether the prime minister was aware of Bradley's old blog posts before giving him his current job, the spokesperson said: "I think you can assume no". He insisted he wouldn't "get into hypotheticals" as to whether she would have still given him the job if the posts had been brought to her attention before the appointment.



"It’s fair to observe that these views have only just come to light," the Downing Street aide said.



In a post on his personal blog, Consbradders32, in 2012, Bradley supported Iain Duncan Smith’s controversial benefit cap and said reducing welfare dependency was necessary to preserve British culture.

“Vasectomies are free,” he wrote.

“Families who have never worked a day in their lives having 4 or 5 kids and the rest of us having 1 or 2 means it's not long before we’re drowning in a vast sea of unemployed wasters that we pay to keep!” Bradley continued. “Iain Duncan Smith’s cap proposal is spot on!”