Voters are seduced, not appalled, by Cameron’s poshness: it’s his secret weapon

I was slightly sceptical of Team Cameron’s decision to unveil their ‘secret weapon’ last Sunday — namely, Dave’s wife Samantha. Not that she isn’t luminously beautiful. And her ability to juggle motherhood with a high-flying career will undoubtedly appeal to many professional women. Rather, it’s her social provenance that concerned me. Wouldn’t her transparently upper-class persona upset what the American journalist Michael Wolff has called the ‘careful tonal balance’ of Cameron’s ‘postmodern transmutation of the class issue’?

But, oh, how wrong I was. A couple of days later, the papers were full of stories about the ‘Sam Cam bounce’. According to one opinion poll, her appearance on television had boosted the Conservatives’ lead to 11 points.