London

David Cameron strides up the stairs of his North Kensington house, shouting ‘Where is that tie? Has anyone seen my tie?’

His wife Samantha tries to navigate a pushchair through a hallway partly blocked by household clutter and me, waiting to drive with her husband to Battersea helipad.

‘Would you mind?’ she asks, slightly flustered.

‘No, of course not.’ I step through an open doorway and find a baby sitting on the floor. It has red cheeks, some of its father’s bulk and an air of calm intelligence. It eyes me curiously. I say hello. Feature continues

The room is very plain: a sofa, a rug, a few pictures and a PC. David Cameron’s house is rented and would feel curiously uninhabited were it not for the bustle and chaos of the Cameron family setting out for the day.

I wonder if this is an attempt to mitigate the fact that the leader of the opposition is a silver-plated, old school toff (and not any old school, but Eton), allowing me to see him as an ordinary man struggling with everyday problems (though his unique problem, disabled son Ivan, is not to be seen today). If so, it’s artfully contrived but almost immediately undermined by Cameron’s irrepressible poshness.

Coming back down the stairs, he says, ‘I need a coat for the weekend [he will be appearing at the Cenotaph remembrance ceremony]. I think M&S do one for about a hundred pounds.’

I nod, aware of the coat in question.

‘If not,’ he ponders, a fuller-faced Marie Antoinette, ‘I’ll just have to get one from the flea market.’

It’s easy to sneer, but posh is working for Cameron. Although he claims to be sick of his job already – ‘opposition is miserable; you don’t have any power to do the things you want to do’ – after a year in charge, his brand of hug-a-hoodie noblesse oblige has resurrected the party.

When Cameron speaks, people listen. And on many issues – crime, the environment, health, education – he now sets the agenda in London. So much so he has knocked Ken Livingstone from the top of the annual Time Out Movers & Shakers list, and ‘beating Ken Livingstone’, he admits as we walk to the car, ‘has been a bit of a problem up to now’. An understatement given his party’s disastrous failure to find a suitable candidate to stand in the next mayoral election.