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Lib Dem MP Sir Vince Cable has compared Theresa May's Tory conference speech to the work of Hitler in an extraordinary broadside.

The former Business Secretary, who is currently unopposed to be the next leader of the party, told the New Statesman a section of the speech was "quite evil" and "could've been taken out of Mein Kampf."

In her first conference speech as party leader in October last year, Mrs May told party faithful that people who consider themselves "citizens of the world" are in fact "citizens of nowhere."

She said: "Today, too many people in positions of power behave as though they have more in common with international elites than with the people down the road, the people they employ, the people they pass in the street.

"But if you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere. You don’t understand what the very word ‘citizenship’ means."

(Image: PA)

Sir Vince said the passage was out of character for the PM.

He said: "I thought that particular phrase was quite evil. It could’ve been taken out of Mein Kampf . I think that’s where it came from, wasn’t it? ‘Rootless cosmopolitans’? It was out of character for her.”

The term 'rootless cosmopolitans' in fact emerged not in Hitler's work, but as an anti-semitic trope in post-war Russia.

(Image: AFP)

The term was used in state propaganda newspaper Pravda to describe Jewish intellectuals.

In an article criticising "one anti-patriotic group of theatre critics" the author wrote: "These critics have lost their sense of responsibility to the people. They represent a rootless cosmopolitanism which is deeply repulsive and inimical to Soviet man. They obstruct the development of Soviet literature; the feeling of national Soviet pride is alien to them."

Tory MP Mims Davies said: "It is disappointing and surprising that such an experienced politician, who wants to lead the Liberal Democrats , chooses to throw around Nazi slurs like Ken Livingstone.

"Vince Cable should reconsider and retract this ill-judged comment.”