What school Cameron went to doesn’t matter to me – but what school you went to clearly does matter to David Cameron

In October 2008, David Cameron was quoted in the Daily Telegraph as paying tribute to a recently selected Conservative PPC, a working class black Londoner, called Shaun Bailey: “We need Shaun in Parliament because of the different experience he brings”. Mr Bailey returned the compliment by saying Cameron was “very sharp, and for someone who went to Eton he has a real understanding”.

At the time, David Cameron was desperate to show that the Conservatives had changed, that they were reaching out to look more like the country they aspired to govern, that they were no longer the ‘nasty party’.

Yet this weekend, the Daily Telegraph ran an extraordinary story saying that Mr Bailey, who went on to be Cameron’s only black working class adviser at No 10 after the General Election, had been “pushed out of Downing Street by the Prime Minister’s clique of Old Etonian aides”.  Mr Bailey lost his job as the PM’s special adviser on youth, crime and race issues and was moved instead to a part-time role in the Cabinet Office.  ‘Friends of Mr Bailey’ told the newspaper:

“They just didn’t get what Shaun was saying…He went into Downing Street and the first thing he said was, ‘The only political conversation you need to have publicly is about the cost of living’.  He also gave plenty of warning that if they wanted to talk about being a diverse party, people have to see it.  But they didn’t want to hear about it.  Shaun was frozen out.  Shaun always says that you can see from space the place is dominated by those from Eton”.

Jesse Norman, an old Etonian who was recently promoted to David Cameron’s new policy board, defended his appointment and that of fellow Etonian Jo Johnson saying: “Other schools don’t have the same commitment to public service”.

It was the Tory MP Sarah Wollaston who spoke for many when she tweeted in response: “Words fail me… I’m not asked for policy advice, but just in case…there are other schools and some of them even admit women”.

As well as Jo Johnson and Jesse Norman, other notable former Etonians include Ed Llewellyn, Cameron’s chief of staff; Sir George Young, the chief whip; Oliver Letwin, the Cabinet Office minister; and Rupert Harrison, the chief economic adviser at the Treasury.

Personally, I couldn’t care less about where David Cameron went to school.  I am more interested in what he does as Prime Minister.  The fact that he has cut taxes for millionaires, whilst asking millions of hard-pressed families to pay more, is far more telling about the people he chooses to stand up for.  What school Cameron went to genuinely doesn’t matter to me.  But the truth is, if you look at all the appointments Cameron has made, what school you went to clearly does matter to David Cameron.

But perhaps the most shocking about this weekend’s Telegraph report about Mr Bailey was the anecdote that when a polling expert asked a group of Cameron’s advisers what kept them awake at night, somebody apparently replied “school fees”.

Not the huge increase in long term and youth unemployment.  Not the small business person whose firm has folded because their bank won’t give them access to finance, despite having just paid out massive bonuses to senior people at the bank.  What keeps them up at night is not the impact on disabled people of the Government’s bedroom tax, nor is it the sight of families queuing outside food banks for tins of beans and powdered milk.  No. What keeps David Cameron’s advisers up at night, we are told, are school fees.

What we are left with is an impression of a Government that is hopelessly out of touch.  In a response to the well-sourced report in this weekend’s Daily Telegraph, Shaun Bailey – in a suspiciously rare intervention on Twitter – said: “Very happy with my move to the Cabinet Office.  The PM’s office have treated me well”.

Mr Bailey is, apparently, still ambitious to be a Conservative MP.  I suspect that he still sincerely believes that the cost of living crisis is what should be keeping David Cameron’s advisers awake at night.  But on Monday morning, Mr Bailey will make his way past the gates of Downing Street; perhaps he’ll pause for a moment with the tourists to glance through the locked iron bars towards the famous door of No 10, some way in the distance.  He will then make his way through the less impressive doors of the Cabinet Office to his new and part-time place of work.  I wonder if Shaun Bailey thinks 2008 now seems a very long time ago.

Michael Dugher is MP for Barnsley East and Labour party vice-chair