It is almost enough to make you feel sorry for him. In interview after interview, Tory leadership contender David Cameron is interogated about his gilded upbringing. How, he is asked repeatedly, can an old Etonian hope to become Prime Minister of 21st century Britain? Each time I witness this sad spectacle, I can't help feeling a deep sense of unease at the sheer unfairness of the line of questioning.
Cameron no more chose to go to Eton than he chose the colour of his eyes. The decision to send him to the elite English public school was taken by his parents, who happened to be part of the small section of British society rich enough to make such a choice. You can't blame a person for being born rich anymore than you can blame them for being born blind.
It is therefore ludicrous, not to mention dangerous, to assert that an accident of birth makes Cameron unfit to lead his country. The constant invocation of his privileged background shows that Britain is not, as some would like to believe, a classless society. The assumption that the Prime Minister should be an everyman points to the continuing importance of socio-economic background in British life.
The constant commentary on Cameron's upbringing also indicates another unsavoury aspect of British politics - trivialisation. This has been illuminated in the past week by the absurd furore over the non-issue of whether or not Cameron took drugs during his student days. If the Tory leadership candidate was currently shooting up heroin, then, fair enough, that would be an issue. But no-one is suggesting that Cameron still has a drug habit. Who cares then if he had the odd spliff fifteen years ago? Is this really the most pressing issue in British politics at the moment? Aren't UK troops involved in a war somewhere in the Middle East right now?
None of this should be seen as an endorsement of Wee Davie and the Notting Hill Massive. I can think of many reasons why Cameron would be a disaster as PM - his inexperience, his association with the hard right in the 1990s, his Thatcher lust, his Euro-phobia - I could go on and on. But his privileged schooling and (alleged) wild university years aren't on that list. Likewise I could rattle off Blair's failings - Iraq, privatisation, spin - without needing to mention his gilded background.
The media trivialise politics with their obsession over "personality", their preoccupation with an MP's accent, their hobbies, their looks, their dress sense or the quality and quantity of their mistresses. By trying to be personalities, politicians are always fighting an uphill battle against the real celebs: the film stars, footballers and TV presenters with whom they compete for newsprint. Cameron may be marginally more pleasing to the eye than most politicians, but Brad Pitt he aint.
Any politician should be judged by two criteria - their policies and their ability to put these policies into practice. Nothing else matters, or rather nothing else should matter.