Tough luck, old boys

For a centre-right political party, the Conservatives are oddly obsessed with where people went to school. Michael Gove and Lady Warsi both lamented the number of Old Etonians in influential positions earlier this year. It may not have been coincidence that, within five months, both had moved posts: there remains a potent undercurrent of class tension in today’s Conservative party.

The charge sheet is simple. David Cameron has stacked the corridors of power with those who share his black-and-turquoise old school tie. How can it be that British politics has regressed into the chumocracy days of Harold Macmillan? Yet the prominence of Old Etonians today is not a throwback to an era that we thought we’d left behind — it’s a last hurrah.

Here are some facts to mollify those who despair at David Cameron and his ruling clique. When Winston Churchill returned to power in 1951, he led a party with 76 Old Etonian MPs.