Quote of the day

From Rawnsley in The Observer (here):

David Cameron once grasped that its reputation as a party of the rich was a serious impediment to the Tories. In opposition, when he was trying to give his party a detox and present himself as a different kind of Tory leader, he made several speeches challenging big business, attacking high finance and swearing that he would never be the mouthpiece for either of them.

In the wake of the financial crisis, he went so far as to deplore "markets without morality", rhetoric that could fit snugly into any of Mr Miliband's speeches arguing for a new form of more responsible capitalism.

Now Mr Cameron hosts fundraisers heaving with financial speculators. Perhaps he never really believed a word of it when he used to denounce them. Perhaps he has concluded that the public belief that the Tories are "the party of the rich" is just too indelible for him to shift. So he might as well make his cynical, if demeaning, best of it by stuffing his party's campaign war chest with cheques from Russian bankers who think a game of tennis with him is worth 160 grand.