Only the Tories offer opportunities for all The Conservatives are often accused of being focused on presentation rather than policy. But their real failing has been precisely the opposite. The golden thread that unites their education and welfare reforms is to spread opportunity - to provide the poorest and most disadvantaged with the aspiration, skills and incentives to better themselves. Yet because of the social composition of the party's leadership, there has been an often crippling reluctance to articulate this, allowing the Prime Minister and his colleagues to be lambasted by their enemies as "Tory toffs." All credit, then, to Sir John Major for arguing so forcefully on his successors" behalf. This self-made, working-class Tory observed in a speech to a constituency association in Norfolk that it is "truly shocking" that "in every single sphere of British influence, the upper echelons of power in 2013 are held overwhelmingly by the privately educated or the affluent middle class." But this was not so much a coded criticism of Mr Cameron (even though the Prime Minister palpably prefers to be surrounded by those with whom he is socially as well as ideologically comfortable). It was part of a full-on assault on a Labour government that left, in Sir John's words, "a Victorian divide between stagnation and aspiration." He gave the example of Calton, in the Labour heartland of Glasgow East, which has the lowest life expectancy in Europe: just 54 years. "I remember enough of my past," added Sir John, "to be outraged on behalf of the people abandoned when social mobility is lost." And he also identified the sovereign remedy: an education system that helps children maximise their potential, giving them and their families the confidence and belief that they can escape the poverty and dependency trap. In the process, he added, we will also cut crime, since it is young, poor and under-educated children who are most likely to go off the rails. Sir John had much more to say, not least about the importance of unity and discipline to the Tories" election changes, and the impossibility of fixing the country's problems from the opposition benches. But we suspect it is his comments about aspiration that will resonate most, not least because of his own remarkable back story. It is past time that other members of his party felt able to make the same case. If the Conservatives are seen as the party of the few, the rich, the privileged, then it is all too conceivable that a Labour leader posing as the tribune of the people will be able to snatch victory in 2015. The Tories must remind voters that they are, and always have been, the party of aspiration - not just for some, but for all.