When David Cameron became leader in December 2005, Labour strategists hoped desperately that class would become an issue once more in British politics. Their hopes were dashed, however, by the public’s apparent decision to buy Dave’s mantra: “It’s not where you come from, it’s where you are going.” The playing of the “toff” card in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election backfired spectacularly, as have Gordon Brown’s intermittent attempts to present Cameron and Osborne as “public school bullies.”
But there have always been nuances to this. Very senior Cameroons have expressed fears to me over the past three years that class could indeed return to haunt the Conservative Party if its senior figures did not watch their behaviour. They understood – or appeared to – that the voters were not giving them a green light to behave like characters from Brideshead Revisited, Antic Hay or Crome Yellow.
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