Earlier in the campaign, Labour HQ must have been regretting a certain picture of Sarah and Gordon Brown (final image of the set). If so Tory high command will have similar feelings about this photograph taken on Friday when David Cameron was touring Leadenhall Market in the City of London.
Shirt sleeves? Sure. A pair of Converse? Certainly. A top hat? Surely not.
This may be “classless Britain” but Tory strategists know that anything that links a politician with his or her privileged upbringing plays badly with many voters. The press knows this too – hence the Daily Mail’s attack on Nick Clegg’s background.
The picture of Cameron in a top hat is used in today’s Los Angeles Times to accompany a piece titled British Conservative candidate works to overcome his posh background. It opens:
The man who may be Britain’s next leader grew up in a spacious country home in this village of thatched roofs, green fields and classic red phone boxes, playing tennis on the family court and joining the occasional foxhunt.
He got his university degree from Oxford, where he belonged to an exclusive club of young men with a reputation for wearing tails and drinking to excess.
His closest political ally is the son of a baronet, and Queen Elizabeth is a distant cousin.
Playing the class card may be unfair but, as we’ve discussed before, four of the best practitioners of class politics were Ted Heath, Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Michael Howard.
In unrelated news, here’s a New Statesman cover from last month:
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