Back in February the Mail got very excited about the billionaire philanthropist Sir Michael Hintze ‘pulling the plug’ on Dave. Sebastian Shakespeare might wish to go back to his top Tory source, who told him:

“Michael is fed up with David Cameron and George Osborne and doesn’t see why he should prop up the party any longer. He is deeply upset with the party’s promotion of gay marriage; it grates with his Catholicism. And as a tax-cutting free marketeer, he’d hoped to see a more radical economic agenda.”

Hintze was so “deeply upset with the party” that he gave the Tories their largest single donation under David Cameron. As Guido revealed in yesterday’s Sun and official figures will show on Thursday, at the time the Mail’s new diarist was writing that he was no longer supporting the Conservatives, the philanthropist was actually writing a cheque for a cool million and a half quid – effectively clearing the party’s debts. Shakespeare’s whole story was a figment of his imagination, not for the first time…