David Cameron's band of Etonian brothers

There's a line in "The Eton Boating Song" that goes: "Nothing in life shall sever the chain that is round us now". And nobody is bound by that chain more forcefully than the would-be next Tory prime minister, old Etonian David Cameron. All leaders like to have people around them they can trust - Julius Caesar famously wanted "men about me that are fat" - but the extent to which Eton is the common denominator in Cameron's circle is remarkable.

Old Etonians and No 10 do have a special relationship. The country's most prestigious public school - founded in 1440 - has produced no fewer than 18 of Britain's 52 prime ministers (all, needless to say, Tory), but if Cameron becomes the 19th, he will carry the school with him to No 10 like few of his predecessors.

Herein lies the great Cameron paradox. Since winning the Tory leadership 18 months ago, he has done some very un-Tory things - from urging us to hug hoodies to renouncing the "no-such-thing-as-society" mantra of the Thatcher years. With his open-neck shirts and relaxed manner, no Tory leader has ever been - or appeared to be - quite such a man of the people as Cameron. He rides his bike to work. He goes home to his family in north Kensington (not Notting Hill), he puts his children to bed. He's quite the regular guy.

And yet. And yet. So much of his outlook on life and his political thinking is informed by his privileged past, and so many of his closest friends and advisers, both inside and outside the shadow cabinet, are creatures of that same narrow world. It's not something Cameron likes to draw attention to - but then of course it wouldn't be.

Altogether, 14 of Cameron's front bench spokesmen are old Etonians. Another three work in his private office. Many of the 14 are from a previous generation. For example, Lords Glentoran, Cope of Berkeley, Bridgeman and Skelmersdale left the school fully 30 years before Cameron. But all provide reassuring political ballast to a leadership light on executive experience, as does old Etonian Oliver Letwin - a veteran of Mrs Thatcher's poll tax.

Of the others, there is Viscount Astor, who happens to be Cameron's stepfather-in-law, and Hugo Swire, who has been a holiday companion. Cameron did not know Boris Johnson well at school, being two years his junior, but they overlapped at Oxford, as members of the Bullingdon Club. Among Tory spokesmen, Bill Wiggin is an exact school contemporary and the Cameron and the Wiggin families have many associations. The pair themselves, though, are not close.

Among Cameron's friends outside politics, there is a striking number of Etonians. Pete Czernin, Simon Andreae, Tom Goff, James Learmond and "Toppo" Todhunter were all in the same house and maintain close contact with him to this day. Giles Andreae (brother of Simon), James Fergusson and Dominic Loehnis - all Etonians Cameron got to know well at Oxford or later and who are now in various branches of the media - also remain close.

So what is it about Eton that makes it such an important element - one might almost say defining element - within both Cameron's social circle and on his front bench?

Perhaps the answer, in coded form, can be found (omega) when Cameron discusses his own attributes. Asked what he has to offer, he is inclined to play up another facet of leadership. "I think I can put a team together," he says. Given the patronage and carrots and sticks at the disposal of a Tory leader, "putting a team together" might be thought the sine qua non of standing for the highest office, the least of his challenges. But it reveals a good deal about Cameron and the importance he attaches to personal relations.

While Eton is a large, daunting and competitive school, nowhere is likeability, the creation of friendly personal space, more highly regarded. (One former headmaster said the school "teaches boys how to put adults at their ease".) The school offers many opportunities for personal fulfilment, and the pursuit of diverse hobbies are encouraged without prejudice, but implicit is a strong ethos of clubbability. Rubbing along with people, however different their interests (within narrow social confines, admittedly), is vital. Cameron - never short of self-assurance - was as comfortable as anyone in this milieu. His contemporary, the literary critic James Wood says Cameron was "confident, entitled, gracious, secure... exactly the kind of 'natural Etonian' I was not".

The school is not exactly a hothouse, but 1,250 tailcoat-wearing boys living in close proximity represents a fairly formidable shared experience. It creates a certain disposition in an adolescent. While they escape to the privacy of their own rooms at night, in Eton's "public" space there is a daunting quantity of lessons, games, music and art lessons to be tackled in a packed weekly timetable. The initial demands of the uniform, the argot, the acronyms and the curious conventions do tie boys together. Conferring is vital.

The bonding is cemented, of course, in extramural activities. Cameron was not particularly rebellious, but he was no stranger to mischief. As a member of the Corps, the school's junior army, he was very much "one of the lads", and played his part in off-piste naughtiness while away camping. He won the respect of contemporaries by also doing social work (most boys either join the Corps or do social work), although that may have provided a handy pretext for slipping out of the school's confines. He smoked, he drank and he even smoked cannabis.

Yet it took 25 years for it to surface that he was disciplined for taking drugs. This suggests that he was, and is, popular enough for those who knew him not to tell tales out of school.

All of which indicates that when Cameron says he can put a team together, he means that he has passed Eton's test. He's not only a good bloke, but other people know it too. They will be prepared to follow him. To this day, Cameron will readily describe someone as "a nice man", ahead of their drive, intelligence or any other assets. Being a good egg, as it were, and to have the approval of fellow Etonians, is no small thing. He would vehemently reject the idea of a pro-Eton bias but, well, he likes what he knows.

Is he not worried by how all this looks, though? "Dave Snooty and his pals" might be a politically potent weapon against the modern Conservatism, yet his choice of backroom staff and front-bench stars is gloriously, recklessly tribal. Why? Because in (omega) dismissing criticism of himself as "too posh", he applies the same disregard in his appointments. He has said he won't send his youngest son, Elwen, to Eton, because it is wrong to have to pay for a good education. But for now, he's not going to bar those who have had a good education, expensive or not.

There is another factor at work. For all Cameron's openness and approachability, he is a cautious man. The chief criterion for inclusion in the circle can be gleaned from this remark from an associate of his: "Dave only really trusts people he has known for 20 years." If that means Eton and/or Oxford, so be it. There are non-Etonian members of Cameron's inner circle. But figures like Steve Hilton, who supplies ideas, and Andrew Feldman, who brings in donors, have both known him for the requisite two decades.

Cameron is extraordinarily grounded and guilt-free about where he comes from. If people hold his schooling against him, that is their problem, not his, he says. His friends say that it would be curious if any country barred the best-educated people from high office. The fact that personal wealth is needed to acquire it does not make it a bad education.

His own relationship with the school is an insouciant one. While intellectually he is inquiring enough to read, say, Will Hutton while on holiday, socially - notwithstanding the presence of a bohemian (but socially smart) wife - he is defiantly old-fashioned. He knows what he likes, and that is the tried and tested, socially comfortable county world of his idyllic Berkshire upbringing. It never gave him any reason to rage against an existence which produced nice polite chaps who pottered blamelessly through life studiously not upturning applecarts.

For the most part, these people trust one another because they've never had reason not to. Cameron enjoys being with men apparently as relaxed and assured as he is. As the psychologist and Eton-educated Oliver James has said: "Etonians are good to be around. They have a fundamentally optimistic view of life... If the sun shines on you for so much of your early life, you tend to think it has been put there for that express purpose."

But some are less forgiving about this charmed world. Politically it breeds the opposite of radicalism. Someone who knows him well - and, having been to Eton, can claim to speak with some authority - says Cameron is secretly an unabashed social elitist. "I think there's something very unconservative about believing that because of who you are, you are the right person to run the country. It's the natural establishment which believes in power for power's sake, the return of people who think they have a right to rule."

Another school contemporary says: "He's a strange product of my generation... He seems to represent a continuation of, or perhaps regression to, noblesse oblige Toryism. Do we want to be ruled by Arthurian knights again?" If the polls are to be believed, and if, as King Dave might say, it just so happens that a lot of the Arthurian knights went to Eton, maybe we do. s

James Hanning and Francis Elliott are the authors of 'Cameron: The Rise of the New Conservative', published by 4th Estate at £18.99

Etonians on David's side

Boris Johnson, 42

The blond mop of the incomparable Alexander Boris de Pfeffel shone as a beacon through Cameron's school days. At Eton Boris was in the year of Cameron's older brother, Alexander. At Oxford, too, Boris was way out in front, outraging and delighting student hacks at the Union. Boris has performed an ice-breaking function for Cameron, rehabilitating posh politics while Cameron was still holding a clipboard at Carlton. Today, Johnson keeps a tenuous hold of a lowly front-bench job while young Cameron walks off with the prizes.

George Bridges, 37

Cameron's political director was barely into his tailcoat when his future boss was posing for his "leaver" - the exit photograph that is one of Eton's more obscure traditions. Bridges' and Cameron's paths crossed again in 1992 when Bridges, a grandson of Winston Churchill's Cabinet Secretary, was drafted into Conservative Central Office to help with the party's general-election campaign. He followed Cameron into the media world, working at ONDigital before that venture finally died. He is now effectively No.2 in the executive arm of Cameron's regime.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, 54

Cameron was bought up in the Newbury constituency that has been variously represented by Clifton-Browns, Hurds and Mounts (the Tory leader's mother's family). Sprung from the same rootstock as his leader, farmer Geoffrey, as reassuringly Tory as an old (but expensive) tweed jacket, is now the member for the Cotswolds and a shadow foreign-affairs minister. At Eton G C-B was in the same house as Hugo Swire, but they just missed one another.

Hugo Swire, 48

A good bit older than David Cameron but, nevertheless, one of his closest friends in politics. Another (non-Etonian) friend described him as performing for Cameron the same role as does Charlie Falconer for Tony Blair. Swire, loyal, implicitly Tory (his wife Sasha is the daughter of John Nott), and not in any way threatening, shares holidays with the Camerons. Swire was the first to try to collect support for Cameron from other MPs two years ago (before Cameron nudged to him to one side). A contemporary once said being reprimanded by the sleek former auctioneer was like being "licked by an Afghan hound". After leaving Eton in 1977, he worked his way to the top at Sotheby's and was made Shadow Secretary for Culture Media and Sport by Cameron.

Oliver Letwin, 51

Hard to believe, but Letwin is a Viking: that is to say, a member of an Old Etonian rowing club. A member of Oliver Bull's house, he and his friend Charles Moore left for Cambridge in 1974. Where Cameron glided, so Letwin glid before, through the Conservative Research Department to becoming a special adviser and thence into the City, before the triumphant return to parliament as an MP. Letwin performs the same sort of mentoring role for the Tory leader as did Derry Irvine for Tony Blair. Letwin, who urged Cameron to run for Tory leadership under the slogan "Civilising Britain", is now helping him construct policy.

Edward Llewellyn, 42

"Steady Eddy" Llewellyn was a slightly older contemporary of the Tory leader at Eton, but their paths rarely crossed before he left in 1983. Before going up to Oxford he worked at Conservative Central Office, and was active in student politics while there. Llewellyn seems to have realised early that his destiny was in the backroom. He served first as Chris Patten's aide in Hong Kong, and then as Paddy Ashdown's sidekick in Bosnia. When Cameron decided he was serious about a tilt for the top job, one of his first recruits was the discreet old Etonian to run his office.

Viscount Astor, 55

William Waldorf Astor is David Cameron's stepfather-in-law and has played a decisive role in his development ever since he started dating Samantha Sheffield, "Bill" Astor's stepdaughter in the early 1990s. His wife, Annabel Astor, helped secure Cameron his job at Carlton Television, and it was at his home, Ginge Manor, in Oxfordshire, that David and Samantha Cameron held their wedding reception. Once Cameron was elected an MP, Astor sat with him on the board of Urbium, which owned a string of bars and nightclubs. Less happily, he has been romantically involved with Cameron's erstwhile friend and ally Rachel Whetstone.

Danny Kruger, 33

The baby of Dave's Eton Rifles, he headed down the M4 from Slough in 1992. Danny "Freddy" Kruger is his speechwriter and an "ideas man". Formerly at the Daily Telegraph, he got the gig with Cameron by elucidating his "big idea" last year ("people are happier in communities which can only flourish in conditions that allow individual freedom"). Kruger was sacked as a Tory candidate at the last election after calling for the "creative destruction" of public services while deputising for Cameron at a think-tank event. But the new Conservative leader rapidly rehabilitated him.

Dom Loehnis, 38

One of Cameron's most trusted friends and sounding boards. Politically "wet", he was below Cameron at school and Oxford, but they saw a lot of one another in the late 1980s when Loehnis was at the Sunday Telegraph and Cameron was at Conservative Central Office. Soon afterwards, Cameron helped him secure the job of special adviser to Peter Brooke at the Heritage department. He now works in television, and shares with Cameron an interest in cricket, bridge, socialising, piss-taking and cooking.