The Daily Mail is believed to have paid significantly more than £50,000 – and possibly in excess of £100,000 – to win exclusive rights to serialise Lord Ashcroft’s biography of David Cameron.

There is understood to have been no auction for the rights to the book because the Mail made a “very good offer”, according to one source.

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The unofficial biography, jointly written with Isabel Oakeshott, the former Sunday Times political editor, claims that Cameron was involved in a drug-taking environment at university and a bizarre dinner club initiation ritual.

Ashcroft, the former Conservative party deputy chairman and treasurer, is understood to have wanted the Mail to serialise the book. One rival newspaper executive said: “It’s not about the money for Ashcroft. He wanted the impact of the Mail.”

The Sunday Times, which had hoped to be able to bid for the serialisation given their links to one of the co-authors, was also told that the rights had gone elsewhere late last week, before even being given a chance to bid. The Mail on Sunday also failed to bid for the rights to the book.



One Fleet Street source described the serialisation and timing as a “declaration of war” by the Mail’s editor-in-chief, Paul Dacre, who believes the prime minister is too soft on serious issues such as immigration and Europe. Any suggestion that the book was serialised for anything other than its editorial and public interest merits was strenuously denied by Associated executives.

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A spokesman for the Daily Mail said: “This is a hugely anticipated and important biography and, in common with almost every other serious national daily and Sunday newspaper, we were interested in serialising it.

“We are delighted that Lord Ashcroft came to the decision that the Mail was the right paper to be granted first exclusive serialisation rights.”

Ashcroft also shares an interest in military charities with the Mail and last week, he become the largest single contributor to the newspaper’s campaign to support a commando jailed for shooting a wounded Taliban fighter, when he gave £50,000 to the Alexander Blackman legal campaign.

The former Tory party donor described as a philanthropist and military historian by the Mail also “donated generously” to its £4m appeal towards the building of an armed forces memorial within the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire.

The serialisation is also expected to have a huge impact on forward sales of the book, with publishers increasing its print run to more than 10,000, a high figure for a political biography.

The run is understood to have been extended after a large supermarket chain put in an order for the book in the light of the Mail’s first day, which revealed details of a student ceremony involving a dead pig among other things.

Call Me Dave is published by Biteback, which is run by Iain Dale, a former Conservative politican-turned-blogger and broadcaster. Ashcroft owns a majority stake, understood to be close to 75%, in Biteback publishing.

Sources close to the authors described the book as serious and said its 620 pages contained far more damaging allegations than those contained in the first day’s coverage.

However, one former newspaper executive-turned-publicist called the first day’s revelations a bit of a “damp squib” with several old allegations. “This could be the book torpedoed by a pig,” he said.