Eton

Are voters really concerned about how many Old Etonians David Cameron surrounds himself with? Judging by the cutting remarks from Michael Gove and Sayeeda Warsi it matters a lot, but opinion polling tells a slightly different, more troubling tale about how people feel about the ‘political class’. On the Eton question, YouGov recently carried out a poll asking which characteristics they found most unsuitable for a ‘leading politician’.

Class never quite goes away as an issue for the Tories, for the simple and sufficient reason that it matters. Lately it was Michael Gove stating the obvious, that the Prime Minister mixes mostly with people with backgrounds like his own...a perfectly human impulse, but not a good look, the Old Etonian coterie. Now David Davis has observed (on the radio) over the weekend, as John Major did last year, that it's much harder than it was when he was growing up for a working class boy to get ahead in the world. Mr Davis is a product of a Tooting grammar school, a route that's now closed, but it wasn't just grammars that he was talking about, but social mobility generally. It's not the first time he's given the government the benefit of his views on class.

If Grant Shapps and John Major gave a speech but no journalists were there to cover it, did it really happen? That’s what happened today. The Tories invited one pooled camera into their headquarters to see the former prime minister stand next to the party chairman in a belated attempt to prove that at least two senior Tories did not go to Eton. Loyal MPs and spinners delivered the speech line-by-line on Twitter; but the only interesting bits were briefed out to the Daily Mail last night. Apparently, Sir John could only afford half an hour off from watching cricket, so there was no time for a Q&A – nothing at all to do with his off-message comments that have generated plenty of column inches over the last year.

Ed Miliband might have to tone down the attacks on Old Etonians after weeks of speculation were ended today with an announcement from Labour that they have hired Paddy Hennessy, the now ex-Political Editor of the Sunday Telegraph, to spin for them. The hire is is likely to trigger renewed scrutiny of the backgrounds of the Miliband and those closest to him. As this month's Spectator Life will reveal, Ed is surrounded by some incredibly wealthy champagne socialists. Find out just how many and who on Thursday.

In this week’s magazine Fraser Nelson and I look at the breaking of the English middle class, a subject so scary you’ll want to hold someone’s hand when reading it. The frightening thing is that in Britain, as in the United States, the middle class is not just squeezed but shrinking and sinking. Even before the Great Recession began, middle-class jobs in the law, media and accounting have been melting away, outsourced, unprofitable or obsolete, while salaries are falling behind prices. This is not a product of the credit crunch, and it will not be going away. Median hourly income in London is now below 2002 levels, real wages in Britain have not risen since 2005, and the median income has been static or in decline since 2004.

Last week I chided those in SW1 who were criticising David Cameron for appointing yet more Old Etonians to his staff without first checking their own teams for signs of blue blood. Now news reaches me that Downing Street has not done much to counter the original charge. Etonian stereotypes were alive and well during Jo Johnson’s first meeting with the government’s special advisers. A humble state educated aide could not help but notice that all the OEs gravitated to one side of the table. ‘Jo Jo’ was joined by Cameron’s chief-of-staff Ed Llewellyn. And when Rupert Harrison, the chancellor’s brain, entered the room, he was drawn to the ‘right side’. It was almost a school reunion.

The Prime Minister chose his words carefully earlier today when asked if he would be sending his children to private school. Sky News’ eagle-eyed Sophy Ridge reports that Cameron was cross-examined by a pesky school kid at a ‘Cameron Direct’ meeting this morning at the John Cabot Academy in Bristol. Cameron told his inquisitor that he ‘would like’ his children ‘to go to state school’, which is nearly the same thing as saying that they will do. The Prime Minister pointed out that his two children of school age - Nancy, 8, and Arthur, 6, attend state primary schools, which implies that they will continue to do so at secondary level. Only he didn’t quite say that because what he actually said was: ‘That is my intention.