Once one examines the Conservative benches more generally, the contrast with the past is yet more stark. In the past a very substantial majority of Tory MPs would have gone to public schools. Research by the Sutton Trust shows that it is now down to 54 per cent, with 27 per cent having attended comprehensives and 19 per cent grammar schools. The Sutton Trust makes much of the fact that the number of Old Etonians in parliament has increased from 15 in the 2005 parliament to 20 in the 2010 parliament — but this is a real-terms fall in their numbers on the Tory benches.

The 2010 crop consists of 19 Tories and one Liberal Democrat — the Lib Dem is Viscount Thurso, elected in 2005 as the first hereditary peer ever to be elected to the Commons without renouncing his title, made possible when the majority of hereditaries were excluded from the Lords in 1999. Thurso lists his recreations in Who's Who as "shooting, fishing, food and wine".

The 2005 crop consisted of 13 Tories, Thurso and Mark Fisher, Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent, who retired in 2010 and was replaced by Tristram Hunt, educated at the fee-paying University College School, Hampstead. The Tory Etonian representation has gone up from 13 to 19, but the number of Tory MPs as a whole has increased from 198 to 306, so the percentage of OEs has fallen from 6.6 per cent to 6.2 per cent

Philip Beresford, the compiler of the Sunday Times Rich List, put together a subsidiary list of the richest 20 politicians in 2013, all of whom had identifiable wealth of £8 million or over. Only seven MPs make it on the list: four Tory (Richard Benyon at £110m, Zac Goldsmith at £75m, Adam Afriyie at £50m and Philip Hammond, as the only cabinet minister, at £8m) and three Labour (Margaret Hodge at £18m, Tory defector Shaun Woodward at £15m and Geoffrey Robinson at £10m). This contrasts with Tory cabinet ministers of the Major era: Robert Cranbourne, now the Marquess of Salisbury, is valued at £275m and Lord Heseltine at £264m.

The Register of Members' Interests provides much more information about the assets held and outside earning of MPs. Any shareholding worth more than an MP's annual salary (£66,396 since April) has to be declared, as does property worth more than that amount which is not used for residential purposes by the MP or his or her immediate family.