Norm Lashes The Coalition AND Cameron.

Lord Tebbit's criticism came amid reports that Mr Mitchell decided to quit after younger Tory MPs from the 2010 intake made clear their hostility when parliament returned this week.

Writing in The Observer, Lord Tebbit - a Cabinet minister in Margaret Thatcher's government - said: ''This dog of a coalition government has let itself be given a bad name and now anybody can beat it.

''It has let itself be called a government of unfeeling toffs. Past governments have had far more real Tory toffs: prime ministers Alec Douglas-Home and Harold Macmillan, or even in Thatcher's day, Whitelaw, Soames, Hailsham, Carrington, Gowrie, Joseph, Avon, Trenchard and plenty more, without incurring similar abuse.''