Is Lord Ashcroft’s book, Call Me Dave, a political bombshell or a squib? The Daily Mail, having obtained the serialisation rights, clearly thought it was the former.

It devoted seven of its pages on Monday to the extracts plus a leading article in which it claimed that the “warts-and-all biography of David Cameron” would “make political waves” (see below).

The Mail added: “We fought off strong competition from rival newspapers” in order to give our readers “first sight of what is an important, if controversial, anatomy of modern politics.”

According to the paper, the unauthorised biography - co-written by Isabel Oakeshott - was “thoroughly researched and... extraordinarily even-handed”. The paper’s front page presentation was anything but even-handed: Drugs, debauchery and the book that lays Dave bare.

However, the main headline was “Revenge!” and indicated the real reason for the book, a point illuminated by the page 2 profile of the man born Michael Ashcroft.

The piece cited an unnamed “associate” as saying: “The thing you’ve got to understand about Michael is that he is incredibly loyal to his friends but will go to the ends of the earth to get even with anyone who crosses him.”

It said Ashcroft had “poured £8m” into the Conservative party and, in so doing, had helped Cameron to become prime minister. But “in an act of treachery” Aschroft “was betrayed” by Cameron “who reneged on his promise to give him a senior government position.”

Follow-ups by rival papers to the Mail’s revelations referred to Ashcroft, in the Daily Telegraph’s phrase, reigniting his bitter feud with Cameron.



It selected as most significant the claim by Ashcroft that Cameron was aware of his “non-dom” tax status in 2009, a year earlier than the prime minister originally claimed.



The Independent’s take also mentioned that claim along with the accusations that Cameron was a member of “another debauched Oxford society apart from the Bullingdon Club” and allegations of Cameron allowing cocaine to be taken at his London home.

The Times also thought the claim that Cameron “smoked marijuana and was a member of a ­decadent dining club while at Oxford university” was of greatest interest.

The tabloids, by contrast, were much taken with the book’s claim Cameron once put a “private part of his anatomy” into a dead pig’s mouth during “a bizarre initiation ritual” into the said Oxford club.

The Daily Mirror nosed on that allegation, as did the Daily Express and also the Sun which went to the trouble of illustrating its online report with a picture of the prime minister holding a pig.

But it was noticeable that these follow-ups did not appear to share the Mail’s view that the book was hugely important. So will it, as the Mail argued to hype up its investment, “make political waves”?

Given that Cameron’s Tories have a working majority in parliament, and that the rightwing national press’s main target (and obsession) remains Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn, it is highly doubtful that the book will cause more than a ripple.

Timing, as everyone in politics knows, is crucial. If the book had been released prior to the general election it might possibly have had a significant impact.

Now I cannot imagine it doing much more than ruffling Cameron’s feathers. Most of the negative stuff is historical, unsurprising and of little real consequence.

People are much more likely to view the whole business as poor form by Ashcroft, a case of sour grapes.