Cameron mired in an Eton mess of his own making

Well, no, it didn't. Mr Collins, the first active US sportsman to come out as gay, was taking a truly courageous step in a nation where 30 states refuse to recognise same-sex unions. Mr Norman, in contrast, was surely having a laugh.

It would have taken a plebeian heart of stone not to chortle as Mr Norman tried to defend his boss, also an old Etonian, for appointing yet more old Etonians to government. Mr Norman is one – all hail the new member of the parliamentary advisory panel – and the other is Jo Johnson, the JoJo to his brother Boris Johnson's BoJo, who is the new head of the Number Ten policy unit.

Mr Norman said he could easily explain why there were six old Etonians sitting elbow to elbow with Mr Cameron in Downing Street. It was not that their parents had bought them privilege and connections and that the lucky recipients of these gifts were merely cashing in the chits now that Dave was Prime Minister. Oh dear, no. Old Etonians were naturally suited to government because the school's ethos made them so. "Other schools don't have the same commitment to public service," he said.

Unfortunately for Mr Norman, some in his own party saw it as their public duty to point out that he was talking hooey. "Words fail me," said Conservative backbench MP Sarah Wollaston. They did not, however, fail Mike Russell, Scotland's Education Secretary. Presumably envious of the cross-border rammie between Vince Cable, Business Secretary, and Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland over the collapse of RBS and potential prosecutions, Mr Russell could not resist wading into the Eton mess created by Mr Norman. It might be the ethos, said Mr Russell, or it might be because the system favours the rich and privileged over the poor and badly educated. I think we can guess which explanation the SNP MSP finds more persuasive.

At this point, a wise prime minister would have considered himself to have suffered a well-deserved thrashing and sloped off quietly, perhaps to ask his Chancellor for advice on cultivating an estuary English accent. But no. Mr Cameron, on this occasion, proved himself as much a stranger to wisdom as he is to housing benefit. He appointed people because they were good enough to do the job and they were the right person. The key question, said Mr Cameron, was always whether they were good enough.

It is true that Mr Cameron has an ex-comprehensive school pupil on his team in the shape of William Hague, the Foreign Secretary. There is a former miner and farm worker, too, in Patrick McLoughlin, the Transport Secretary. Both commendable, but it is hardly France's World Cup-winning team of 1998 in its diversity.

If Mr Cameron sounds as if he is on a wicket stickier than a bee's knees it is because he is. Every so often the cry goes up that the British should stop being so obsessed with class, that our fixation with where people come from is unhealthy, unproductive and not terribly relevant. Mr Norman is only the latest to wish everyone would chillax about the matter, and the latest to be pilloried for doing so. Given the backlash, one has to wonder why he did so. Is that a kite being flown by the PM's new adviser, and if so, why now? Because the clock is ticking down towards the next election and because class, for Mr Cameron, has been, and is, such a toxic issue.

Given the way his party was moving it was remarkable that he even became leader. Margaret Thatcher, John Major, William Hague, and Michael Howard were products of grammar schools; Iain Duncan-Smith went to a faith school. Mr Cameron was a throwback to the Macmillan and Eden eras. Now, despite being three years in office, instead of rowing back on privilege within his team, and setting an example to the world outside Downing Street, he is actively entrenching it. This is either a Prime Minister who has swallowed his own PR – it matters not where you come from, we are all in this together, and so – or he really is as arrogant as he sometimes seems. In telling us to calm down, dears, it's all about talent, not old school ties, he is either playing the fool or taking us for one.

By handing out so many jobs to the boys who went to Eton, Mr Cameron is showing how out of touch he is with the instincts of the country he is meant to be governing. Though he wears the latest trainers and designer jeans, he is in essence a tailcoat and top-hat Prime Minister. It is not waging class war to say so, merely stating the obvious.

Alan Johnson, the former Labour Home Secretary, has just published a memoir, This Boy. They might like to put it on the reading list at Eton. In it, Mr Johnson describes his own path to power – one that started in a London slum, and one that was almost entirely free of privilege other than the love of his mother, who died aged 42, and his sister, who brought him up. Speaking about Britain today, Mr Johnson had an interesting fact to share: five schools, only one state-funded, send more pupils to Oxbridge than 2000 comprehensives. If you don't believe that this is fundamentally wrong then you have no business being Prime Minister.

We should not climb too high up the moral ground in Scotland, however. Though we pride ourselves on being a more meritocratic country, though one of our ministers sees fit to have a pop at Downing Street over the Eton set and its ethos, let us not kid ourselves that we are free from the same class and education divides. How many MSPs, for example, have sent or are sending their children to the Etons of the north?

As for Mr Cameron, he can go on believing that he really does appoint people without reference to how they came to be where they are. A great believer in luck, is this Prime Minister. If only he could see that when it comes the blatant elevation and protection of privilege, he is pushing his own.