Brown’s new weapon – the class war

Withdrawal of copyright will not stop the Bullingdon photo being used to beat David Cameron, says our Downing Street insider

The Scottish island of Jura and the playing fields of Eton may seem unlikely bit players in the next general election - but not if Gordon Brown and Labour strategists have anything to do with it.

Two weeks ago, Cameron's membership of the exclusive men-only Bullingdon dining club at Oxford hit the headlines with publication of a photo of the Tory leader-to-be posing in tails with other club members, including Boris Johnson, a fellow undergraduate.

Yesterday, the photographers who own the copyright to the Bullingdon snap banned its use (The First Post has commissioned an illustration of Cameron's pose).

This week it was also revealed that Cameron enjoys shooting stags on Jura.

Neither would be that big a deal if Cameron

had not tried so hard to play down his posh background.

Now Labour intend that the Tory front bench's close links to wealth and privilege becomes an election issue. It doesn't help Cameron that his front bench is full of old Etonians while the Labour front bench is an Eton-free zone.

Labour has been reluctant to play the 'class' card up to now for one obvious reason - Tony Blair himself went to Fettes College and Oxford. But once Blair is off the scene, Gordon Brown (Kirkcaldy High School and Edinburgh University) will have no such no qualms.

Nothing is guaranteed to motivate Labour party members more than regular reminders that David Cameron is not the 'ordinary bloke' he likes to portray, and that he belonged to a club whose members paid £400 a head for a meal and then liked to wreck the restaurant.

Labour strategists know that many voters, especially in key northern seats, are still put off by Tory toffs. It will take more than the withdrawal of photographic copyright to spoil Labour's strategy.