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.”