Camerons finally move into Downing Street

David Cameron and his family are moving into Downing Street today. The Prime Minister told the BBC that he had enjoyed his “last breakfast” in his west London home with his pregnant wife Samantha and their two children.

It was clear the family were moving with some regret, having spent considerable time and money doing up their home, which, as the electorate has spotted during various TV interviews, is “a minimalist heaven” decorated with Scandinavian furniture.

The Camerons are moving initially into the small flat “above the shop” at Number 10 while they wait a few weeks for the larger flat above Number 11 to be refurbished. As The First Post reported on Monday, Samantha insisted on a new kitchen before agreeing to the move. The Camerons have wisely said they will foot the bill for the refurbishment themselves.

At last, then, Cameron is leaving the Notting Hill set – though he always denied he belonged to that group of aspirant, affluent young Tories, maintaining that his home is actually in North Kensington, a less salubrious area nearby. The removals vans arrived there today - and Cameron's much-photographed bicycle was one of the first items to be packed (above).

At Downing Street, they are following the trend set by Tony Blair in 1997 when he said the Number 10 flat where Denis and Margaret Thatcher had mixed their G&Ts was too small for a young family and insisted on taking the Number 11 apartment instead. (When the Blairs moved in, it’s said the smell of cigar smoke left by the former Tory Chancellor Ken Clarke was still in the air – or perhaps in the soft furnishings.)

If the accommodation in Downing Street seems a little soulless after west London, the Camerons will at least have the pleasure of a fabulous weekend retreat - the enormous 16th Century stately home with heated swimming pool at Chequers, used by all PMs since David Lloyd George in 1921.

As for whether the Camerons rent or sell their £2.7m house, when asked by reporters, the Prime Minister joked: “I certainly won't be renting it to Miss Whiplash, if that's what you mean.”

He was referring to the notorious case of his old boss Norman Lamont, the Tory Chancellor who let out his London home while he was stationed in Downing Street in the early 1990s – only for the press to discover that it had been rented by a sex therapist. ·