In 1975 the Conservative back-benches were still packed with knights of the shires, many of whom were drawn from the lower tiers of the aristocracy and the gentry. Sara Morrison, a close friend of Heath, is quoted by Moore as saying, "The men with double-barrelled names never took to Ted." Heath's background — he was the son of a carpenter and builder — was if anything more modest than Mrs Thatcher's. Her own campaign was organised by an Old Etonian, Airey Neave, and other early supporters included fellow OE Nicholas Ridley, son of a Viscount. 

Mrs Thatcher's governments were dramatically more toffish and well-heeled than Cameron's. Of the 22 members of her first cabinet, six had been to Eton and only two — one being Thatcher herself — had not attended public schools. Three cabinet minsters were clearly aristocratic — defined as having at least one grandparent with a hereditary title. The composition of the 1970 Heath government was similar in class terms. If one goes back to the Tory governments of the 1950s and '60s, they were even more blue-blooded: they obviously varied over time, but up to a third of cabinet members were aristocratic and the share never fell much below a quarter. As to schooling, all 18 members of Eden's cabinet (1955-57) had attended public schools and ten were OEs. Under Macmillan the number of Etonians went down to eight — or just under half the cabinet — and unaccountably they also allowed in one person who had not even gone to a public school.

Two-thirds of John Major's first cabinet in 1990 had attended public schools — again the Prime Minister was a prominent exception. Three members were aristocratic — and the Eton quota had now gone down to two. Over time then, Tory governments have gradually moved down the social ladder — and the Cameron cabinet marks a dramatic acceleration of this trend. His first cabinet in 2010 was the first-ever Tory-led cabinet in which more than half its members — 12 out of 22 — had not gone to a public school. Only one member had been to Eton — the Prime Minister himself — and only one was aristocratic. Even the sole aristo, Lord Strathclyde, was a rather less grand representative of that station than was seen in earlier Tory governments. The title was created in 1955 for the current holder's grandfather, a Glasgow Unionist MP and chartered accountant. Hereditary titles, with a few exceptions, ceased to be created just a few years later after the passing of the Life Peerages Act in 1958 and all but finally went out with the election of Harold Wilson's government in 1964. 

Even these figures understate the change — the other public schools which were attended by cabinet ministers in both the Thatcher era and even more so in the 1950s and 1960s were very much at the grander end of the spectrum. These were still well represented in 2010, but schools such as Brentwood in Essex (Andrew Lansley) and Robert Gordons College in Aberdeen (Michael Gove) — schools which have about as much in common with one of Alastair Campbell's "bog standard comps" as they have with Eton — had also crept into the list. The change in cabinet makeup was not accounted for by the fact that this was a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats: two of their five cabinet ministers (Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne until his legal travails) went to Westminster School.