ETON MAFIA’S PLOT TO REGAIN No.10

DAVID CAMERON became the 21st leader of the Tory Party on December , 2005, after securing more than twice as many votes from members as David Davis.

The speed and relative ease with which the Notting Hill set rose to the top of the Conservatives took even its lead figures by surprise.

‘We couldn’t believe how easy it was to take over the party,’ George Osborne remarked privately afterwards.

Is Cameron (pictured right in his Eton days) his own creation? Or was he manufactured by a powerful cabal, rooted in Notting Hill but with tentacles well beyond W11, who saw him as their best prospect of seizing power? According to one of his Eton contemporaries, Tory grandees were making contingency plans for a long stretch in the political wilderness as much as a decade earlier.

The source says: ‘In the midNineties, the Tory Party was exhausted, divided and rudderless after a decade and a half of rule. I remember discussing this with an ex-Tory minister at an Eton dinner.

‘[He] said to me that a suitably qualified Old Etonian could take the party and lead it back to power over a decade or so. He encouraged me personally to undertake this and offered assistance. I told a few other Etonians of my vintage of this opportunity (not Cameron), but they and I did nothing. Cameron went on to do exactly that.’

The source’s hypothesis is that Tory grandees had been ‘out looking for talent’ for a long time — and that rather than being ‘self-made’, Cameron was ‘manufactured’ to fit the bill. It’s tantalising to imagine that a shadowy group of Old Etonians carved up the future leadership of the country.

However, the fact they wanted one of their own as Tory leader probably tells us more about their sense of entitlement than it does about how Cameron came to power.