Guido wonders if the drugs publicity backfired on the moralisers and helped Cameron and the Tory party at large:

In 1952 Winston Churchill was entering the House of Commons when he heard a young Tory backbencher tearing into Labour’s Aneurin Bevan. ‘Who is that?’ Churchill asked the chief whip. ‘Iain Macleod, sir.’ ‘We must have him in the government,’ said Churchill. ‘I am afraid that he is too young to be eligible,’ was the chief whip’s reply. ‘On the contrary’, Churchill retorted, ‘he is too eligible to be too young.’ Macleod was 38, one year younger than David Cameron.

Hat-tip: Vernon Bogdanor. (Professor of government at Oxford University and David Cameron’s tutor).

Is it my imagination or do these two have something in common? Guido had to do a double take when he saw the pictures from Maggie’s birthday party. Perhaps they share a hair-stylist?

Too close to call. Both of ‘em are frantic not to get knocked out – Clarke slyly telling hustings he has never taken cocaine (without being asked) and Fox doing his stern doctor piece on the dangers of drugs. Cameron is their target and drug policy their weapon.

The Guardian reckons the “issue first surfaced at a conference fringe event when Mr Cameron was asked if he had taken drugs”. The Guardian has it wrong, the issue was first raised in the Indy, (non-exec director, Ken Clarke). The Indy has given Ken Clarke a lot of help during the leadership race, organised a party fringe meeting for him, a few adoring interviews and generally said that its director would be the best leader of the Tory party. So would Guido be too cynical to think that the man who keeps mentioning cocaine might be the man who encouraged a journalist to look into Cameron’s views on drug policy? Cameron is of course the reason Clarke has failed to gather in the votes of centrist MPs…

Cameron has consistently advocated the reform of drug laws, serving on the home affairs select committee in 2001, he supported the reclassification of cannabis and ecstasy. At the time he wrote: “I am an instinctive libertarian who abhors state prohibitions and tends to be sceptical of most government action, whether targeted against drug use or anything else … Hounding hundreds of thousands – indeed millions – of young people with harsh criminal penalties is no longer practicable or desirable.”

Guido hears a rumour that he will be appointed to head the 2012 Olympics PR machine. Expect to read stories about how Britain will win ALL the gold medals soon…

Tory blogs are alive with smears, allegations of smears, and smearing of smearers. Over at Tim Montgomerie’s ConservativeHome.Com (home of the Compassionate Conservative Christian Right) he has had to block some of the more outre comments. Over at the Social Affairs Unit’s blog the wonks are arguing over hypothetical allegations of Oxford Union cocaine binges. Even the non-Tory Mike Smithson’s PoliticalBetting.Com is seeing the comments section getting writ risky.

Cameron’s lunch with Lord Rothermere has not resulted in favourable coverage from the Daily Mail. Dacre today ladles hypocritical excrement all over Cameron: “the bitter truth is that there is a direct connection between this ambivalence over drugs among an affluent metropolitan elite and the hopeless, helpless junkies in bleak housing estates who are destroying their lives and blighting whole neighbourhoods through crime…. If he becomes Prime Minister, how can he possibly have a position on drugs if his own record remains shrouded in mystery?” (Guido suggests Dacre visits the convenient-for-the-office Roof Gardens nightclub to find out which of his elite metropolitan journalists are more than ambivalent in this area.)

Cameron’s rivals are gleeful, before all they had on him was that he was too posh and too young. For now Cameron’s team intend to hold the line (pardon the pun) at that was then, this is now. Cameron has also met with Murdoch, whose tabloids have a ruthless streak that Dacre’s drink addled journo’s lack, but it remains to be seen if he has impressed Murdoch enough for him to rein in his News of the Screws hacks.

Guido congratulates Tim Montgomerie for his masterful use of the Mandelsonian dark arts in bringing this issue into the mainstream. It was first the Mail’s ever abstemious Peter McKay and then Tim who publicly and repeatedly, again and again linked Cameron’s liberal comments to the Home Affairs Select Committee on drugs with his personal history. Tim boasted that his “post of Sunday on ‘Cameron and cannabis’ produced more than 160 reactions (at the time of writing this) and the subject is interesting commentators, too. Pundits are seeing Mr Cameron’s unwillingness to talk about his experience with illegal drugs as a betrayal of ‘the new kind of politics’ that they hope he might represent.” That will have diminished Cameron and benefitted the crucifix brandishing Dr Fox no end amongst the more socially conservative activist readers of his blog. Tim should however remember the fate of the Pharisees, who thought themselves holier than Jesus, and were eager to condemn him as a blasphemer. They crucified their own saviour as a result.

The Indy’s diarist Guy (no relation), is on to the story. In a piece about Blair’s secret hotel assignation with Chirac’s deadly rival

Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac made efforts to put recent fisticuffs behind them, when they publicly kissed and made up in Paris last week.

Sadly, relations are now frostier than ever, after the PM decided to invite Chirac’s arch-nemesis, French home affairs minister Nicolas Sarkozy, for a secret tête à tête in Westminster on Monday.

Although Downing Street initially denied that any meeting had taken place, it was later forced to issue a “clarification,” saying that the two had been involved in “private discussions”.

Now details have reached Pandora of both the contents of their conversation, and the extraordinary lengths that Downing Street went to in a bid to prevent the summit from becoming public.

Initially, I gather that Sarkozy was due to arrive at Downing Street at 11am, for talks in the PM’s private office. However, he was later instructed to present himself at the Marriott Hotel next to Westminster Bridge at 8.30pm. Staff ushered him into a private suite, where Blair spent an hour, discussing what one French observer has described as the “British economic model.”

This marks a severe breach of protocol on both men’s part. Sarkozy is Minister for the Interior – the equivalent of Charles Clarke – so was upstaging Chirac by discussing economic affairs.

Blair, for his part, should never have held official talks with Sarkozy. In any case, economics are supposed to be Gordon Brown’s baby. His spokesman will say only: “It was a private and informal meeting.”

“He was knocking me about the control room trying to get the email. This guy has a very short temper and was howling at the moon” claims Stephen Pound, 57 year-old Labour MP. “He’s pulling everyone’s leg, there was no grappling. It was hardly Giant Haystacks against Big Daddy – it was more like handbags at dawn” says Philip Davies, a newly elected Tory MP. When Pound read out an embarrassing email from the Tory MP’s research assistant – “Tomorrow Philip will be on Talksport from 12-1 with Steven (sic) Pound and Simon Hughes. Please let members know so they can call in and support Phil.”

Pound whines “This man was embarrassed at the little scam being found out. I’ve decided he’s a little squirt and don’t want to give him any more publicity by reporting him to police. At one point it became quite farcical as the producer is blind and we ended up falling over his guide dog. But it’s not really funny. It was very undignified. We were toe to toe body-checking each other. That’s how I got hurt. I’m not happy about it at all. My rib is really very sore.”