To the untrained eye, the social gulf that separates David Cameron and Nick Clegg is hard to spot. They are both sons of financiers, both ex-public schoolboys, both the products of elite English universities and both in their early forties. Indeed, when they gave their joint press conference in the Rose Garden last week it was reminiscent of the final scene in A Comedy of Errors in which two twin brothers are reunited after being separated at birth.
However, for those well versed in the manners and habits of the educated bourgeoisie, the differences between them could hardly be more pronounced. Cameron likes to remain aloof, whereas Clegg likes to be the centre of attention; Cameron is inner-directed, while Clegg is outer-directed; Cameron wants to be feared, Clegg wants to be loved. It all boils down to the difference between Eton and Westminster.
As a grammar school boy at Oxford it took me a while to tell the products of these two ancient public schools apart, but eventually I hit upon a method. It was the different way in which they tried to put me at my ease. A typical Old Etonian would make no attempt to conceal his sense of superiority but would talk to me as if I, too, was a member of the same exclusive club. A typical Old Wet, by contrast, would attempt to lower himself to my level, doing everything in his power to dispel any impression I might have that he thought himself superior.
The lengths to which Old Wets would go to appear ‘normal’ were often quite comic. I remember one undergraduate in particular who was so anxious to disguise his privileged upbringing that he spoke in what he imagined was a cockney accent. The trouble is, his only exposure to working-class Londoners was confined to film and stage adaptations of the novels of Charles Dickens. When I first heard him refer to another Old Wet as ‘me old China’, I thought this was an example of the stage cockney that Nancy Mitford and her friends would use as a joke. In fact, he genuinely believed he had the whole world fooled.
Old Etonians weren’t entirely free of this desire to escape censure in virtue of their background, but their method of disarming their critics was to charm rather than deceive. Their impeccable manners were both a way of advertising their membership of the elite and a method of compensating for the antagonism it gave rise to. As a general rule, people liked the idea of OEs less than the idea of OWs, but found their company more pleasant.
To a great extent, the differences between the two can be explained by the location of their alma mater. Eton is in a small town in the English countryside, whereas Westminster is slap bang in the middle of London. Eton’s remoteness accounts for the slightly other-worldly quality of its products, almost as if they’ve beamed down from another planet. Westminster, by contrast, prides itself on being at the cosmopolitan heart of things. This distinction can be summed up by adapting a well-known saying about the difference between the Oxford man and the Cambridge man: the Wet thinks Westminster is the centre of the world, whereas the Etonian thinks the world ends three miles outside Eton.
This helps explains why Clegg did better in the leadership debates than Cameron. It wasn’t that he possessed the common touch, more that he was better at faking it than his opponent. How to pass yourself off as a man of the people is the lesson that every child at Westminster has drilled into them from the age of 13, whereas Eton tries to instil its students with the confidence to stand apart from the mob. In this respect, Old Wets are much more suited to the demands of democratic politics than Old Etonians.
In the end, though, it is OEs who make the better prime ministers, which may account for why Eton has produced so many more than Westminster. The problem with Old Wets is that the desire to be liked gets into their souls. The Liberal Democrat party is their natural home since they want to be all things to all men. OEs have no such desire. When the time comes to start making unpopular decisions, David Cameron won’t hesitate. Nick Clegg, I fear, may prove faithful to his alma mater.
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