With the new government comes a new elite. But just who will be pulling the strings in Britain? We reveal the young, patrician circle around Cameron and
Clegg, whose ties stretch from the City and PR to Google and the high
street

Le Café Anglais is the perfect spot for Britain’s new elite. Rowley Leigh’s restaurant in Whiteleys mall in west London has its own entrance, so that the politicians, businessmen and spinners of Notting
Hill and north Kensington do not have to weave through the
shopping-centre hoodies to get to their starched tables. It’s in this
stately room on a Saturday lunchtime or Sunday brunchtime that you will
find many of the men — and the odd woman — who will wield power over
the next few years. They’ll be there today. But who are they? Would you
recognise them?

Probably not. Unlike Tony Blair’s henchmen, notably Alastair Campbell, Peter Mandelson and Gordon Brown, who were well known when he took power in 1997, Cameron’s close allies remain vague figures to all
but the most conscientious observers. Throw in the shotgun marriage
with the Liberal Democrats and it becomes even harder to work out the
make-up of the new Establishment.

Who is really pulling the strings in the House of Commons; who is likely to rise and who to fall? And what about beyond Whitehall? The guard is changing in business, public relations and the media as well
as socially. A new elite is emerging and, whether we like it or not, we
will be seeing an awful lot of it.

To join the class of 2010, you need to be a man in your forties — 43 is the average age — have a powerful wife, be very international, work in the City or practise the dark arts of PR to pay the bills, live in
west London, have a young family and, therefore, be obsessed with
education. It helps if you play tennis, ride a bicycle and read The
Times — although not necessarily at the same time.

The new elite is divided up into distinct groups and tribes. At the heart is the inner circle. Here you find David Cameron, 43, the prime minister, Nick Clegg, 43, his deputy, George Osborne, 38, the
chancellor, William Hague, 49, the foreign secretary, Steve Hilton, 40,
Cameron’s chief strategist, Andy Coulson, 42, Cameron’s communications
director, Michael Gove, 42, the education secretary, Edward Llewellyn,
44, Cameron’s chief of staff, and Andrew Feldman, 44, co-chairman of
the Conservative party. They are linked by background, friendship and
family ties — but most of all by class.

Cameron is properly posh. The son of a stockbroker and grandson of a baronet, he is a descendant of William IV and distantly related to the Queen. He is also an Old Etonian and, along with Osborne, a former
member of the Bullingdon club, the elitist Oxford University drinking
and dining clique.

Clegg may have gone to Westminster school and Cambridge but he is more Euro aristo than British toff. His grandmother was a White Russian baroness and his great-uncle was clubbed to death in Russia by his own
peasants. His parents live in a vast chateau in France.

Osborne, a product of St Paul’s and Oxford, is a millionaire through his family firm, Osborne & Little, which makes paint and wallpaper. He is a friend of Cameron and godfather to the Camerons’ son Elwen.
Gove, a former president of the Oxford Union, is very close to Cameron.
He was one of the two Tory frontbenchers who attended the funeral of
Cameron’s son Ivan. He furnished the Cameron operation with what many
regard as its best single policy: giving parents the chance to set up
their own schools.

Hilton is a self-made former adman whose studiously low profile belies his importance — he is involved in every important decision Cameron takes. He is intensely proud that there are only two public
photos of him and Cameron together and in one they are standing so far
apart that magazines are forced to run it over a double-page spread.

Hague briefly went to Ripon grammar in North Yorkshire and then attended Wath-upon-Dearne comprehensive in South Yorkshire, leaving Coulson as the only one at the top table not to have been to grammar or
public school — and an Essex man to boot. The former editor of the News
of the World, he plays a key role in reminding the
public-schooldominated inner circle of the hopes and fears of tabloid
readers.

Feldman is much more than cochairman of the party and fundraiser. A friend of Cameron since they were at Brasenose College, Oxford, together, he ran his leadership campaign and is by his side in Downing
Street. He is praised as a cool head and is likely to be elevated to
the House of Lords as a junior minister.

Llewellyn, another Old Etonian, brings man-of-the-world experience to the prime minister’s ear as his chief of staff. Slightly older than Cameron, he worked for Chris Patten when the Tory grandee was a
European commissioner and governor of Hong Kong, and he was later Paddy
Ashdown’s aide when Ashdown was high representative in Bosnia. He has
contacts among Eurocrats and securocrats and across the party divide.
Ashdown calls him “a good friend”.

The inner circle is supported by Kate Fall, Llewellyn’s deputy, who is at Cameron’s side more than any other aide, and Gabby Bertin, Cameron’s political press officer, who will be in charge of getting
across the government’s message. Expect to see more, too, of Lena
Pietsch, Clegg’s press secretary. She is an ice-cool blonde German who
during the campaign allowed Clegg to munch apples but banned bananas
because of the notorious episode when David Miliband, now a Labour
leadership contender, was photographed waving the fruit — and looking
like one. “Ve don’t do bananas,” she told Clegg.

Posh they may mostly be, but the top Clegg-Cameroons try hard to disguise it in public. One member of the so-called Notting Hill set — Gove, Osborne, Cameron and Hilton all live near one another in west
London — describes them as “public-school boys who like to give the
impression they are modern and groovy because they have at least one
black friend and will employ lots of women when they finally get round
to setting up their own internet firm. The only problem is, none of
what they say is true”.

The other defining characteristic is that many chose not to go into the City and haven’t quite got over not earning the salaries so many of their friends enjoy. “Their hedge fund friends love to tease them by
calling them ‘political povvoes’ and they hate it,” says a close friend
of Gove.

Indeed, for all their professed commitment to creating the “big society” and devotion to liberalism, many of the new elite are surprisingly materialistic. They like nothing more than arriving at
Tory fundraising balls with their wife toting the latest It bag, and
they compete furiously to find the most fashionable architects to
create the perfect minimalist home.

A key attribute of the new ruling class is to be married to a successful and feisty woman. Samantha Cameron, 39, may be authentic old-money county posh — she is the eldest daughter of Sir Reginald
Adrian Berkeley Sheffield, 8th Baronet, and a descendant of Charles II
— but she is a successful businesswoman, working until recently as
creative director of Smythson, the Bond Street stationer. Socially
liberal, she is such a strong influence on her husband that ministers
joke she “will have a more liberalising impact on Cameron than Nick
Clegg”.

Clegg’s Spanish wife, Miriam Gonzalez Durantez, 42, is a high-earning international lawyer who impressed many by refusing to trail after her husband during the election campaign, insisting she had
to work for a living.

Step from the inner circle into the outer circle of power and the story of privilege continues. Chris Huhne, 55, the Liberal Democrat energy and climate change secretary, is another Westminster boy who
shone at Oxford. Once a journalist, he made a fortune in the City
before moving into politics. He owns seven homes.

David Laws, 44, another Lib Dem, did well in the City — he worked for JP Morgan — and is now chief secretary to the Treasury, with the task of making the spending cuts that will begin to reduce the budget
deficit.

At Cambridge he took a double first in economics. “Osborne has nothing approaching David’s ability when it comes to understanding the economy and the markets,” says a Laws fan. Osborne’s supporters do not
demur. The chancellor’s main skill, they say, lies in politics rather
than economics. This makes Laws’s role all the more powerful.

Oliver Letwin, 54, minister of state in the Cabinet Office, went to Eton and is more practical than ideological. He irritates Hilton, who shouts him down in meetings, but he remains close to the Cameron
operation, although he is studiously kept off television, as his
fogeyish public image is seen as a liability.

Few Tories have grasped the importance of Danny Alexander, 38, the Lib Dem Scottish secretary. He was, for years, Clegg’s eyes and ears. He has held his Highland seat since 2005 and is seen as a “dry Charles
Kennedy”. Given the limited responsibilities of the Scottish Office — a
former Scottish secretary, Helen Liddell, took French lessons to fill
her time — he will probably continue to be Clegg’s full-time
consigliere.

The most important political aides in the new Westminster are those who work for Osborne rather than Cameron. Rupert Harrison, 28, chief economic adviser, is known for his judgment and calm and often acts as
de facto policy chief. Matthew Hancock, 31, now MP for West Suffolk,
worked with another key aide, Rohan Silva, for both Cameron and
Osborne. In opposition they overpowered the shadow cabinet.

A tribe known as the “pointy-heads” — a mix of MPs, thinktankers and special advisers — surround the inner and outer circles and act as informal advisers, shaping policy and strategy. They include George
Bridges, 40, another Etonian, who worked at No 10 for John Major;
Stephen Gilbert, a key figure in the target-seats campaign (not to be
confused with Stephen Gilbert the new Lib Dem MP for Newquay); and
James O’Shaughnessy, head of the Tories’ research and sometime south
London disc jockey.

Nick Boles, 44, who set up Policy Exchange, without doubt the closest think tank to the Cameron project, is now MP for Grantham and Stamford. Neil O’Brien, 31, is Boles’s successor at Policy Exchange.
His will be an important independent voice. The only big Lib Dem think
tank, CentreForum, will also be influential — as will its
fortysomething directors, Julian Astle and Alasdair Murray. Gove
realised their potential early on and has formed a common cause with
them over the “free schools” agenda.

Look out, too, for the rising influence of Jonny Oates, the Lib Dems’ head of strategic communications. He played a pivotal role in negotiating equal status for Clegg in the television debates and was
involved behind the scenes in the coalition negotiations in the
immediate aftermath of the election. He stood down from Bell Pottinger,
the PR consultants, to fight the election and was expected to return;
but he is now tipped for a powerful media role in Downing Street
alongside Coulson.

From the outset, Cameron’s new Tories have been social — but tight-knit. Key friends who are likely to exert influence over the prime minister are Gove and his wife, Sarah Vine, a Times columnist.
Vine is close to Samantha Cameron and often takes the Cameron children
to school in her Fiat.

Dom Loehnis, 41, is Cameron’s best friend. They met at school and Oxford and saw a lot of one each other in the late 1980s when Loehnis worked at The Sunday Telegraph and Cameron was at Conservative Central
Office. Another confidant is Sebastian Grigg, 44. He and Cameron met at
Eton and joined the Bullingdon club together. Grigg became a partner at
Goldman Sachs and latterly joined Credit Suisse. He and his wife,
Rachel Kelly, another former Times journalist, host an annual Christmas
drinks in their Lansdowne Crescent home, a fixture for the Notting Hill
set.

At such gatherings, the talk is rarely of politics. Rather, it’s about education — “I do hope Michael Gove sorts out the London comps before my kids get to 11. The state sector’s fine for girls and
Catholics but terrible if you’re a boy” — and second homes, in the
Cotswolds for those who can afford it and north Oxfordshire for those
who can’t.

Members of the new Establishment act alike, especially when it comes to holidays. This summer, expect to see your youngers and betters on the nicer side of Corfu and in the section of mid-Cornwall between St
Mawes on the south coast and Padstow on the north. Yachts, especially
those owned by wealthy foreigners, are avoided.

Whether they are in London or at play, they tend to wear a uniform. Women mix high-street fashion such as H&M with designer labels, so as not to be accused of dressing too far “up” or too far “down”. On
weekdays, men — except Hilton — wear navy suits, usually handmade, with
white shirt, open at the neck with two buttons undone. Some more louche
Cameroons such as Francis Maude undo three buttons. At weekends, those
under 40 — and Hilton all the time — go for jeans and Converse
trainers. Cameron, during his hug-a-husky-and-save-the-planet phase,
once wore sports shoes made from recycled products, but he now sticks
to black jeans and V-neck jumpers.

Power is about more than just the political classes. In media circles Danny Finkelstein, 47, executive editor of The Times, articulates the views of the Tory leadership not just through his
columns and editorials but also with his regular appearances on
Newsnight. Tories joke that Osborne telephones Finkelstein more than he
calls his wife, Frances.

Finkelstein is a rare case of a politician who became a journalist rather than the other way round. He and Osborne (and Sebastian Coe) were in Hague’s kitchen cabinet when he was leader of the party.

On the other hand, the power of some Tory media figures reflects their distance from the inner circle. They are influential because they are critical and speak for Tories not won over by the Cameron project.
Tim Montgomerie, 40, is founder and editor of the ConservativeHome
website for Tory activists, required reading for Cameroons as it
reflects the antagonism of the grassroots.

Cameron tried to win over Fraser Nelson, 37, the Spectator editor and News of the World columnist, by inviting him to his home in Witney. He was unsuccessful. Not surprising: Nelson is a protégé of Andrew
Neil, 61, the veteran anti-elitist, whose views on the toffs at the top
are likely to become more acerbic the more they try to woo him.

Neil’s is the only openly right-wing voice at the BBC, where a clutch of political presenters — and the political editor, Nick Robinson, the business editor, Robert Peston, and the economics editor,
Stephanie Flanders — are making the transition from old Establishment
to new.

The Johnsons — first family of the right — are a journo-political tribe of their own. Boris, the London mayor, is in City Hall and pens columns for The Daily Telegraph; his brother Jo, a former Financial
Times journalist, is the new Tory MP for Orpington; and his sister
Rachel edits The Lady, beloved of gentlefolk in the shires.

In PR, many lobbyists have been scrambling to hire former Tory advisers to bolster their influence with the new administration. Roland Rudd, founder of the City outfit Finsbury and confidant of Lord
Mandelson, has gone one better. His sister Amber is the newly elected
Conservative MP for Hastings, and Robin Walker, a partner in Finsbury,
has become Tory MP for Worcester.

Before the election campaign, the Tories adopted a low profile when it came to business because, as one strategist put it, “we did not want voters to think we were on the side of business, not the people, and
because we wanted to bash the banks”. But that does not mean there will
not be big winners in business and finance who are likely to exert
significant influence.

Simon Wolfson, 42, chief executive of the high-street chain Next, has helped to develop Tory economic policy with Osborne. He is set to become a working peer and likely to mastermind civil service reform. He
believes billions of pounds can be saved by using basic business
management techniques in Whitehall.

In spite of the change of government, Tesco continues to be the best-connected high-street company. Lucy Neville-Rolfe, the firm’s executive director, has advised Andrew Lansley, 53, the new health
secretary, on public health policy.Last week she publicly backed
ministers’ proposal to ban the sale of cheap alcohol, and she is
rumoured to be in line for a ministerial post.

Elsewhere in the new economy, Google, the internet giant, is likely to benefit from the change in administration. Rachel Whetstone, 42, the firm’s global communications and public affairs supremo, worked at the
Conservative research department in the early 1990s, alongside Cameron,
and is married to Hilton.

Sir James Sassoon, 55, former vice-chairman of investment banking at UBS, the Swiss bank, is the new commercial secretary. He was a member of Cameron’s economic recovery committee and produced a report for
Osborne in March on reforming the regulatory system.

Another UBS alumnus, Robin Budenberg, was an adviser to the Labour government in the bank bailout and is now the chief of UK Financial Investments, the body that looks after taxpayers’ stakes in Lloyds
Banking Group, Royal Bank of Scotland, Bradford & Bingley and
Northern Rock.

For the Lib Dems, Paul Marshall, 50, joint head of the hedge fund Marshall Wace, is an adviser to Clegg and is likely to shape the government’s banking policy. He is a free-thinking financier who has
acted as chairman of the City Lib Dems and the Lib Dem business forum
and co-edited the party’s game-changing Orange Book, which championed
pro-market policies. He opposes the ban on short-selling but has called
for more transparency in the City.

The class of 2010 claims to offer the most radical government since Margaret Thatcher arrived at No 10 a generation ago. As Cameron puts it: “This is new politics for a new era.” But it is overwhelmingly
young, posh, white, male and privileged.

The rich and powerful are rarely radical, perhaps because they have had everything on a plate and have little to prove — unlike the Iron Lady, who famously rose from a modest background. One leading newspaper
proprietor argues: “The system delivers too much for them. It’s no
coincidence that Thatcher was a grocer’s daughter.that it has made it,
is the new Establishment too posh to push for change?