“I’ve said to them almost on a daily basis, do not go anywhere near this issue, stay away from it, it’s not an issue that we want to run, it’s not an issue where this contest should be decided”, after saying this on Sunday, guess what? Davis himself again raised the subject today, telling the London Evening Standard that he backed a drive by the Met police commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, to target affluent cocaine users. “Sir Ian Blair has tackled this head-on and he’s absolutely right,” he said. “The law is very clear on this. I have a very clinical view of this thing. The sentencing is right because these drugs are highly dangerous.”

Why the flip-flop? Guido thinks it is because leadership rival Dr Fox has stuck to his right-wing moralising guns and Davis fears leaking votes to Fox. It certainly seems strange that yesterday Basher promised that his campaign aides would not “go near this issue”, and the next day he returns to it. No wonder Fatty Soames said yesterday that “Davis has got plenty of form for this sort of thing. When he said people should ‘speak no ill of a fellow Conservative’ you could hear the sound of people throwing up into buckets at the sheer hypocrisy of the man.”

Former Basher backer and demi-billionaire, Michael Spencer, told The Times it had been “blatantly preposterous” of Basher to fuel the row. Spencer, a Cameroonie and party animal himself, said: “The Davis campaign has been threatened by David Cameron and this is the response. It is bitterly disappointing. There are bigger issues here. It is a sad, sad response of the Davis team to Cameron’s Blackpool speech.”