The argument as to who is or who is not posh seems eternally fascinating to the English, or possibly just the press. But it seems fairly clear that in spite of his best efforts Henry Conway, 25-year-old son of disgraced MP Derek Conway, is not. Despite that he is now disporting himself over the pages of Tatler dressed in corset and jewels and proclaiming himself proud of his father.

We might reasonably have hoped that, having been exposed as receiving £32,000 in parliamentary allowances while an undergraduate at Cambridge, he might have felt chastened and laid low. The more naive among us might even have hoped that he would get a proper job, with a view to paying back some of the taxpayers' money. But no. Last month Conway - who once threw a party called “F**** off I'm rich” - arrived at Mahiki, a naff London cocktail bar favoured by Princes William and Harry, in a horse-drawn carriage and dressed as a Regency dandy. Openly gay, he hopes, he says, to get married one day, wear a pinny and bake cakes. “It'll all be so charming,” he adds. She would be a lucky woman, indeed.

The particular breed of posh toff to which Conway junior apparently aspires is resurgent thanks to the success of Boris Johnson and David Cameron. One suspects that your genuine rich toff would think Conway, who describes himself as Queen Sloane, rather otherwise, but we should not descend to petty name-calling and snobbery. Besides, the point of Johnson and Cameron is that, whatever you think of their accents, they are formidably bright public servants. It seems unlikely that Conway will ever be either. Although he went to Harrow and Cambridge, his current job seems to be as something called a party host.

“He is an impeccable host,” one pal says. “If a friend comes to a club, he will make sure they have someone interesting to talk to.” Another says: “Henry would spend money like water. It was champagne, champagne all the way.”

When the expenses storm broke, Conway thanked his friends for their messages of support and reassured them that he would be in attendance at Mahiki that week. Meanwhile, it transpired that his brother Freddie had been paid more than £40,000 for being a parliamentary researcher when he was a full-time university student.

The Conway saga is a sordid tale of grubby politics, naked greed and social ambition. None of those is particularly novel, or even reprehensible, alone. Together, they make an ugly picture that no amount of corset-wearing in Tatler will dispel. His father once said that his son was entitled to have a social life: what he will make of his modelling debut remains to be seen. But Conway is unlikely to lose much sleep over it. Instead, he is probably planning another assault on high society and another upleasantly titled party. Hopefully, taxpayers won't be paying for it.

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