Conservative party leader David Cameron has been criticised by a former Tory frontbencher.

Graham Brady, who quit as shadow Europe minister in the row over grammar schools, said Mr Cameron is failing to make an impact in key battlegrounds in the North and Midlands.

He said Mr Cameron's appeal was largely restricted to liberal, metropolitan circles in and around London.

Mr Brady said: "The changes David Cameron has made in the Conservative Party have been very successful in some places, and have been better at reaching out to a more small 'l' liberal, metropolitan mindset, but have not been making the same impact further away from London - in the North, in the Midlands, in places which really are an absolutely key electoral battlefield if we're going to win a general election.

"I think some of it is about the issues that David Cameron has chosen to focus more on, and some of it is about just tone.

"There is a simple fact in political life that some messages and some styles play differently in different parts of the country. None of it is impossible to get over. Of course you can talk about the environment, and you can give a grittier more relevant message to people in an inner city community who are worried about crime. And that I think is the balance that maybe so far we haven't quite got right. We need to get that right, and we need to do it quickly."

There have been signs that Conservative MPs are unhappy with their leader.

Poor by-election results for the party were followed by a slump in opinion polls when Gordon Brown became Prime Minister.

There has also been a row over Mr Cameron's recent trip to Rwanda while parts of his Oxfordshire constituency were struggling with floods.

There are also problems arising from the grammar schools row, following his declaration that a Tory government would not support the creation of new grammar schools as they did not promote social mobility.

Mr Brady said Mr Cameron had failed to understand just how deeply the issue cut within the party.

He added; "There is a kind of heartstrings tug. I think it goes to the very core of what the Conservative party is about, which people very often don't understand, which is about aspiration, it's about people having opportunities.

"Those are the really emotive things in our politics. The party seemed to get itself on the wrong side of that, which is a very dangerous place to be."