Status Anxiety | 24 March 2012

Is George Osborne too much of a toff to lead the Conservative party? On the face of it, the answer’s no, even if he does look like ‘a powdered French aristocrat’ (Charles Moore). Douglas Hurd was ruled out on the grounds that he was a titled ex-public schoolboy, but that was 22 years ago. If David Cameron’s poshness isn’t an electoral handicap, then why should George Gideon Oliver Osborne’s be?

But I’m beginning to suspect he’s the wrong sort of toff. On Radio 4 earlier this week, Janan Ganesh made the point that while the Prime Minister and the Chancellor are members of the same class, Cameron is a country mouse and Osborne is a city mouse. That makes Cameron more of a one-nation, paternalist Tory — a ‘communitarian’ in the parlance of Conservative party kremlinologists. Osborne, by contrast, is metropolitan and sophisticated — a social as well as an economic liberal.