The Times reports today that one Abhisit "Mark" Vejjajiva is expected to become Thailand's new Prime Minister tomorrow.
When he first hit my radar in early 2006 (during my previous life at the Telegraph), I highlighted the similarities between him and the (then) newly-elected Conservative leader, David Cameron. They both attended Eton and went on to read PPE at Oxford and, according to Duncan McCargo, a politics lecturer at Leeds University, there were other similarities:
"Mark has been reliant on the patronage of a former leader and has never held a major ministerial position. He is also a bit of a political pin-up but is very bright."
Alas the pair never came across each other in their youth, but another prominent Conservative politician who did know Thailand's new PM well was none other than Boris Johnson. He told me in January 2006:
"He was an exact contemporary of mine at school and is a seriously clever fellow. I'm probably the only person in Parliament at the moment who can spell Vejjajiva, but that won't last as I'm sure he's going to do great things in Thailand. I spent a blissful time with him and his family in Bangkok one summer in the mid-Eighties."
