Tory 'toff' image 'worse than drugs'

Published on Sunday 18 February 2007 00:05

THEY provoked David Cameron's most uncomfortable 24 hours since taking the mantle of Tory leader last year, but the revelations over his drug-taking at Eton might not turn out to be the worst problem to emerge.

Senior members of Cameron's inner circle last night confessed that, when it came to damaging revelations, photographs laying bare Cameron's pedigree as a bona fide 'toff' were far more dangerous.

"There is a sensitivity here," a close colleague said. "David's appeal is focused on his ability to share common ground with the ordinary voter. We know our opponents will have a field day with pictures of him looking smart at Eton or Oxford."

Cameron's background, an Eton and Oxford education and the bloodline to Henry VII, has been a cause of concern for his campaign team.

He has made much of his 'ordinary' lifestyle, but the background the leader himself has described as "hideously privileged" is a source of enduring anxiety.

Although a poll before his election as leader suggested it was not such an issue, image makers have strongly advised Cameron to keep his past under wraps. And it is not just a personal problem. The Tories have based their strategy on the Blairite tactic of winning popular support for their exciting new leader in the hope this will rub off on the party.

A forthcoming study by Britain's most experienced pollster, Sir Bob Worcester, reveals Cameron's personal popularity leads his party's by 14%. But if Cameron starts to tumble now, then there is little hope of a recovery for the Conservatives before the general election.

"Eton personifies world-class privilege," said left-wing Labour MP Dennis Skinner. "The Tories have gone back to the snobs."

It is a charge to which the Cameron hierarchy is sensitive. At a recent Tory fund-raising event, at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, Cameron worked the room, extracting pledges of support from bankers, stockbrokers and businessmen. But

"the Cameron people refused, point blank, to allow photographs," said one observer.

The emergence of the Bullingdon Club picture last week, with Cameron lining up alongside a group of absurdly privileged Oxford students before they trashed a restaurant, was his minders' worst nightmare.

Labour strategists are rubbing their hands. "We have been pushing this idea of Cameron the toff for so long with no real success that we had, frankly, just about given it up," one Labour campaigner said last night.