THAT Documentary Last Night

A hugely important programme. Cameron has few uses, but at least his existence draws attention to the overclass, which emerged, in the 1980s and 1990s, as a result of the same processes as produced the underclass, and which is at least as cut off from life as it is normally lived, but which is much less numerous, is concentrated almost exclusively in one corner of the country, and is much more pernicious economically, socially, culturally and politically.

Although related to the old aristocracy, its members have no social conscience, rather regarding their enormous wealth as "merit", and as entitling them to behave in absolutely any way they see fit, not least with regard to drugs. (Cameron has now pulled off the same evil trick twice, first defining "a normal university experience" as necessarily including illegal drug use, and now doing the same thing with secondary schooling. What next? And when is someone going to take him on?)

Between 1688 at the latest and 1914 at the earliest, the political life of the United Kingdom and of her predecessors was defined by the struggle between the expanding middle and the top. There might have been dire consequences for the emerging working class, but the process eventually delivered it the means of redress. Yet the middle class has now been conned into believing, both that its own interests are identical to those of Cameron (demanding that Blair condemn calls for curbs on City bonuses) or of George Osborne (rushing to defend private equity funds), and that the skilled working class (so comparable in income, concerns, and often even tastes these days) is indistinguishable from the characters on 'Shameless'. The actual median wage for full-time work is around £23,000: that is the real middle.

Thank God that Cameron has not seen the last of that Bullingdon Club photograph, and therefore cannot carry on selling himself, Blair-like, as just an ordinary (if vaguely upper-middle-class) husband and father in early middle age. No, he isn't.

That Club is an organisation which exists specifically in order to commit criminal damage and other offences, even including assault, just so that its members can prove their ability to pick up the bill. Imagine if a group of youths the same age, but who got up at six o'clock in the morning to pay for universities, were to organise themselves into a club (complete with a membership list, officers, some sort of uniform, the works) for the express purpose of smashing up pubs. They would rightly be prosecuted as a criminal conspiracy, and could reasonably expect to be imprisoned.

Well, living in rural England, as I have done most of my life and which is a very different matter from merely owning great swathes of it while living in Knightsbridge or Notting Hill, I suspect that the publicans of Oxfordshire are not without connections in the local constabulary and magistracy. How would it look for Cameron if the Bully Boys were to be locked up for just long enough to have themselves sent down? Or how would it look for the University of Oxford if they were not sent down under such circumstances?

In light of recent events, how many black members has the Bullingdon Club ever had? Has it ever even had one?

But, alas, this film did not feature the strange matter of the Tory Leadership Election. There are only 450 active Conservative Associations, and half of those admit publicly to having fewer than 100 members each. Yet more than a quarter of a million people could be found to vote in the Leadership Election, and - would you believe it? - more than two thirds of them voted for a BBC-endorsed, ultraliberal, warmongering toff and Blair clone.

So, who were these people, and where had they been for the previous 10 years? For that matter, where are they now? The failure to ask these questions was the only fault in an otherwise magnificent documentary.

Oh, and now that he's on the telly so much, there ought to be an Alex Deane Show. Seriously. But what form would it take, and why?