LABOUR MPs seem to consider it bad form to mention the Old Etonian background and fabulous wealth of David Cameron or the baronetcy awaiting George Osborne. In fact, the Tory front bench contains some of the richest politicians outside the Kremlin. Wealthy landlords such as Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling sit alongside Lazards Bank’s man in the House of Commons, International Development spokesman Andrew Mitchell, who is certainly a stranger to poverty himself.
British reticence about such things is not matched in Germany, where the Social Democrats and the newspapers are having fun at the expense of Angela Merkel’s new economics minister. He is Karl-Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Gutenberg. He’s the German equivalent of an earl and has been imposed on the rather more down-to-earth Merkel by the right-wing Bavarian Christian Social Union, the political partner of the Christian Democrats. The 37-year-old aristocrat is an alleged foreign policy expert and will have his hands full as the German economy is doing no better than ours.
With the arrival of a fellow landed gent at the top of German politics, perhaps Cameron will revisit his decision to break the Conservatives’ political links with the European People’s Party. In the 1980s, Labour adopted unilateral nuclear disarmament as party policy. Now the Conservatives are the party of unilateral political disengagement. It is a curious way of preparing for power. But perhaps no more curious than the return of the toffs to rule over us.
So far, Cameron has got a largely free ride from the press. But he is vulnerable because of his privileged background and inability to control the naked greed of his front bench.
He has signalled that he might send his children to state schools. But that was not a pledge. He actually said he would consider not sending his children to Eton if there was a good enough state school alternative. In other words, he gave himself a huge get-out-of-comprehensive-school card. Similarly, Cameron’s spin-doctors intimated that he would stop Shadow Cabinet colleagues earning a fortune outside Westminster from other jobs instead of concentrating on full-time opposition.
As the shop steward for outside earners, William Hague told Cameron to drop this proposal. The outside earnings of the Shadow Cabinet will not now be touched. As a result of all his after-dinner speaking, Hague is probably even richer than Freiherr von und zu Gutenberg, although – as a product of Rotherham – he was not born with a silver service in his mouth like Cameron and Osborne.
Few Tories think they can live on a Cabinet minister’s pay. They probably think they can keep their directorships and public speaking engagements, even if they do form the next government. In Germany, as Earl Guttenberg is finding out, the media are ready to mock the rich right. But not in England, where doffng caps to the Bullingdon boys is still the order of the day.
Denis MacShane is Labour MP for Rotherham
