Tory central

Notting Hill Gate
Notting Hill Gate: is this the new Tory party HQ? Photograph: John D McHugh
With their yellow cycling jackets and shiny Lycra shorts, the two well-heeled young men who speed through Kensington Gardens in London every night on the final leg of their bike ride home, look like unremarkable thirtysomethings. What marks them out as a cut above the other evening cyclists is the sharp right turn they take opposite Kensington Palace as they head north to Notting Hill.

David Cameron and George Osborne, often dubbed the Tony Blair and Gordon Brown of the Tory party, are leading lights in the "Notting Hill set", a coterie of young turks surrounding Michael Howard. Hardly a soul outside the tight-knit Westminster village had heard of the set until a disgruntled Tory MP blamed them this week for waging a whispering campaign against veteran MPs.

"This is what we call the Notting Hill set," Derek Conway said, after a Daily Telegraph journalist on the fringes of the group ran a half-page story about how "bedblocking" MPs were preventing the younger generation from making it to Westminster. George Trefgarne, the Telegraph's comment editor who agitates on the right of the party, lit a fuse which had been threatening to spark into life since the "set" started to wield influence after Howard's coronation as Tory leader last year.

"There is very widespread resentment of the Notting Hill set," says one frontbencher. "To muddle my metaphors, you could say that old turks do not like young eagles."

The older generation regard the set as brash youngsters scheming their way to the top in what Conway called the "bistros" of Notting Hill. This is only part of the picture, not least because no self-respecting member of the set would be seen dead in such an establishment. "I have never set foot in a bistro in my life," one leading member of the group says.

But Conway is right that two pivotal figures at the heart of the group, who live within yards of each other in Notting Hill, do wield enormous influence over Howard. Cameron, the smooth but charming 37-year-old MP for Witney, who served as Howard's special adviser when he was home secretary, was marked out recently when he was appointed as the Tories' chief policy coordinator. This was seen as a major promotion for the tennis-loving Etonian, who has only been an MP for three years and who will now play a central role in drawing up the Tories' manifesto for the general election, expected next May.

His close friend Rachel Whetstone, another former special adviser who works as Howard's political secretary, is the most influential member of the Tory leader's immediate team. She is godmother to Cameron's first child. "Rachel knows Michael's mind better than anyone else," says one member of the set. "Michael made clear that he would only run for the Tory leadership if Rachel went with him."

Within a stone's throw of their flats are two important, though less influential, members. Ed Vaizey, who has inherited the safe Tory seat of Wantage and who can be seen exercising every day in the commons gym with his iPod, is one of Howard's principal speechwriters. "I am a member of the Wantage and Didcot set which is far more chic," Vaizey says. Michael Gove, the cerebral Times columnist who recently secured the Tory nomination for the safe seat of Surrey Heath, is the final member of the quartet who can see each other as they pick up their milk every morning.

At this point, the picture becomes slightly more complicated, because the next key figures in the group have only an honorary claim to the "Notting Hill" tag. George Bridges, a former adviser to John Major who now runs the Tory "grid" which sets out party announcements hour-by-hour, is close to Howard and a close friend of Whetstone and Cameron. But Bridges, whose tortoise-shell glasses rival the magnificent pair worn by the Tory co-chairman Maurice Saatchi, lives in Chelsea.

Steve Hilton, a former ad man responsible for the Conservatives' disastrous "demon eyes" advert, and now the special adviser to Lord Saatchi, is the final member of the set's inner circle, though he lives in north London. As a part-time adviser to the Tory co-chairman Hilton is less influential, though he is very close to Cameron and Whetstone. He shares godparenting duties to Cameron's first child with Whetstone.

As with any group of thirtysomethings the group regularly holiday together, though they now tend to meet up in bars and restaurants less often because many have young children. Their most recent holiday was disrupted last year when Whetstone had to fly home from Ecuador to run Howard's short-lived leadership campaign. In years gone by they have gone on horse riding holidays to Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.

The most influential figure outside the inner circle is George Osborne, the 33-year-old MP for Tatton and former political secretary to William Hague. Osborne, a passionate Atlanticist who has voiced support for John Kerry, is making his mark at Westminster as a treasury spokesman. Bringing up the rear are two journalists: Alice Thomson, the Telegraph columnist, and her husband Edward Heathcoat-Amory, a Daily Mail columnist and scion of the famous Tory family, host one of the party's most influential salons. Thomson ecently wrote of how the young generation of Tories were "desperate for power".

Hilton, 34, admitted yesterday that it was best to be open about the group, which was formed when they all worked together in the Conservative research department in the early 90s. "There is no point in pretending [that it doesn't exist]. We are mates. We go on holiday and have been doing this for years. We all worked together at Conservative Central Office in the run up to the 1992 election. That was the origin of the friendship."

But Hilton insists critics are wrong to see the group as ruthless youngsters who meet purely to further their own careers. "We're genuine mates first, and then comes politics. We have been around for a very long time [and so] all this 'bright young thing' stuff obscures the fact that we are actually old timers. I have been intimately involved in Tory election strategy for nearly 15 years."

He also denies that the set inspired the "bedblockers" story. Insisting that the only plot on their minds is next year's election campaign, Hilton says: "I am looking for a seat, so in a sense I would be an obvious beneficiary [from that story]. But we are incredibly loyal to the long-term success of the party."

With the group enjoying unparalleled influence over Howard, many Tory MPs are envious and resentful. "They are influential," says one frontbencher. "They all appointed each other. There is this peculiar thing about Michael [Howard]. You can either be elderly and experienced and have been involved in government with Michael, or you can be part of the golden youth set. One or the other qualifies you to be in the inner circle - anything else and you are disqualified."

Another shadow cabinet minister thinks the resentment towards the set is inspired by people who are personally bitter that they wield little influence. "People who are not close to the leadership think there is a clique running the show. Rachel Whetstone and David Cameron are Michael's key henchmen and they are well regarded. But it is wrong to think they wield disproportionate influence. Michael is a pretty hard taskmaster - they wouldn't survive if they weren't any good."

One leading member of the set argues that two key appointments to Howard's office, made on Whetstone's recommendation after he won the leadership, show that she does not push a clique. Howard immediately acquiesced when Whetstone said that the veteran Tory operator Stephen Sherborne, who lives nowhere near Notting Hill, should be made his chief of staff and the polished Guy Black, who boasts of his roots as an Essex boy, should be made the Tories' media director. Black, who is struggling to come to terms with his impending 40th birthday next week, insists that he is not a member of the group because he lives in Camberwell with his partner Mark Bolland, former press secretary to the Prince of Wales. But he did become friends with the set when they worked at Central Office in the early 1990s, which means that he may have membership thrust upon him.

"Rachel, Guy and Stephen are the three most important people around Michael," says a well- placed Tory. "The fact that Rachel brought in such wise heads who have nothing to do with Notting Hill gives the lie to the idea that we are an exclusive set who only promote each other."

Howard aides insisted yesterday that the row over "bedblocking" - and the concentration on the Notting Hill set - will die down. In quiet moments, however, they admit that the febrile atmosphere in the Tory party, after one of Howard's most wretched weeks since his coronation as leader last November, means that it can be difficult to control events.

As Iain Duncan Smith can testify, it is unwise to make an enemy of Derek Conway who was one of the key figures in amassing the signatures which led to his downfall. Describing his attack on the set last night as a "shot across several bows", he said: "What yesterday's exercise was about was to let some of the less experienced and less wise heads who are involved in the management of the party understand that they have to be very very careful about how they behave. We won't sit back and take it on the chin. We bite back. They'd better understand we have teeth of steel."

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