If one includes for the Cameron administration not just cabinet ministers but also those ministers who are not full members of the cabinet but who attend cabinet meetings, the Eton tally rises to three, with the addition of the former Leader of the Commons and now Chief Whip Sir George Young and the Cabinet Office minister Oliver Letwin. Sixth baronet Sir George Young fits nicely with the public image of an OE — but Oliver Letwin is the more interesting case. 

Ed Miliband likes to contrast his own background — he went to Haverstock School, a comprehensive in Camden — with that of the Tories, implying that someone like him had to battle hard to get where he is now. Yet his background and that of his brother David is, apart from their schooling, remarkably similar to that of Oliver Letwin. Both sets of parents were north London Jewish intellectuals, both fathers were academics at the London School of Economics, and both Bill and Shirley Letwins' and Ralph and Marion Milibands' homes were meeting places for literary and political figures — in one case for those of a broadly conservative inclination and in the other for those of a Marxist and Marxisant bent. In the May issue of Standpoint Charles Moore described the Letwins' home at 3 Kent Terrace, Regent's Park, where he first met Kingsley Amis, Friedrich von Hayek and Michael Oakeshott among others while dining on Julia Child-inspired dishes. 

In their biography of Ed Miliband, Mehdi Hasan and James Macintyre describe life at 29 Edis Street, Primrose Hill. Ed first met Joe Slovo, general secretary of the South African Communist Party, and his wife Ruth First, later murdered by BOSS, the apartheid-era South African intelligence service, over dinner when he was 12. Frequent visitors included literary theorist Raymond Williams, historian E.P. Thompson, agit-propagandist Tariq Ali and leader of the Labour Left Tony Benn, who is quoted as saying, "Marion is a very good cook. We'd have a lovely meal and then we'd all sit and talk." Benn would even help the young Milibands with their homework. When Edward Miliband, as he was then called, was at a loose end for what to do after finishing his O-levels, Benn records in his diaries that he came to work in his office for the summer. When it came for Miliband to leave, the diaries record that Edward was a very bright young man who would go far. 

For all of Ed Miliband's posturing, it seems extraordinarily unlikely that he could have ended up as a dustman or a postman like many of his school contemporaries. The very different schooling of Miliband and Letwin seems to have nothing to do with class and everything to do with the aesthetic judgment of their parents. The only difference in the status of the older Letwins and the older Milibands is that the Milibands were rather better known public figures; the difference in their finances is that the Milibands owned their home near Regent's Park while the Letwins did not. The most recent house to sell in Edis Street sold in July 2011 for £2,285,000.