THE GLINT:

The new Tories: out of the blue: The Tories have succeeded in recruiting candidates from what would once have been thought of as enemy territory. But while the black security man, the woman boxer and the gay TV presenter may be closer to the people, are they still at arm's length from Team Cameron (Damian Thompson., 4/18/08, Daily Telegraph)

I have spent the past few weeks interviewing Conservative candidates, on and off the record. One thing is clear: even though open primaries are still fairly rare, the leadership has succeeded in its aim of enticing a different kind of activist into the election. The credit belongs not just to Cameron but to the 'quartet' - the leader and his praetorian guard of Steve Hilton, the director of strategy, George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, and Andy Coulson, the former News of the World editor, now director of communications. This is the core of 'Team Cameron'. Other key members are Michael Gove, the shadow education secretary, James O'Shaughnessy, head of policy, and Ed Llewellyn, the chief of staff.

Refreshing the candidates' list was always a priority of Team Cameron. In theory, at least, it has got what it wanted: a collection of people who bear at least a passing resemblance to the general public. Roughly 40 per cent of new candidates are women or from ethnic minorities. On the whole, they are impressive. They may rather obviously tick boxes - gay, Asian, black, female - but they are united by something the Conservative Party has not witnessed for years: the glint of the street fighter in their eyes. For the first time since working-class Tories raided West Midlands council estates in the Thatcher heyday, candidates seem to be winning stretches of enemy territory.

The candidates I spoke to emphasised how grateful they were to Cameron. 'He's made us electable again,' they said. Yet these new-look Tories sounded nothing like the original Thatcher­ites or Blairites, who were desperate to associate themselves with their idol. They never used the label 'Cameronian' or 'Cameroon' except to describe the gang surrounding the leader. Why? As I listened to candidates and party supporters talking on and off the record, the answer became clearer.

Shaun Bailey is a black Tory. In itself, that is not such a big deal. There have been quite a few of those in the past, even if they have not made it into Parliament. Many were pinstriped professionals who sent the old Spectator crowd into ecstasies by calling them 'old chap'. But Bailey, 35, is not the sort of black guy that Conservatives would expect to meet socially. He was once a security guard in a shopping centre. You would not want to mess with him. Hammersmith is a new seat. Before the boun­dary changes it was Hammersmith and Fulham, with a Tory majority of 5,000; now that it has lost Fulham to Chelsea, there is a notional Labour majority of 5,600. Bailey will need a swing of 6.75 per cent to beat Andrew Slaughter, currently Labour MP for Ealing Acton and Shepherd's Bush. To do that, he will have to win votes in the crack-infested housing estates where he spent his childhood.

We meet in a pub in Golborne Road, north Kensington. The bric-a-brac stalls and Portuguese pastry shops create a villagey atmosphere much commented on by estate agents who show clients around in daylight, before the drug dealers come out to play.

I had seen pictures of Bailey, so I knew to expect the huge smile and the gladiator's chest ('unspeakably gorgeous,' said one Tory volunteer). The surprise is the accent, which cannot have changed much since he was sorting out troublemakers at the Trocadero centre in the West End. 'If I were talking to my boys at the youth club, you might understand 30 per cent of what I was saying,' he tells me. There is a touch of pride in his voice - but then he goes into a riff about how black parents must not allow their children to speak to them in slang. 'It's not the street talk I mind, it's the idea that because you're black you have to speak that way. Employers can't understand you and then you're surprised when you don't get the job.'

Bailey and his wife Ellie have a one-year-old daughter. 'I'm not ashamed of my working-class roots, but I'm not going to bring her up in the same depressing environment,' he says.