David Cameron approached Football Association chairman Greg Dyke about running for London mayor before Boris Johnson successfully contested the position in 2008.
Advertisement
“I am concerned about the alleged knowledge, or not, of the non-dom status of some of his friends in the House of Lords”, Mr Corbyn said.
Mr Dyke donated to Labour before leaving the party in 1999 to avoid accusations of cronyism when he was made director-general of the BBC.
Twitter users were definitely not content with their original take down of the Conservative leader on Sunday when the story first surfaced. But Lord Ashcroft’s book claims to shed new light on what happened.
According to the latest extracts in the Daily Mail, Lord Richards told Mr Cameron during repeated clashes over foreign policy that “being in the Combined Cadet Force at Eton” did not qualify him to decide the tactics of complex military operations.
A small plurality of participants who believed the claims said they felt they did not matter (36 per cent) while 30 per cent told the pollster the allegations were important. “I said I quite fancied the job, but I can’t do it”.
After a meeting with Mr Cameron, Mr Dyke concluded he could not run on a Tory ticket and the idea of running with the Lib Dems idea was floated and approved by the PM, but eventually dropped.
The book – written by Tory peer Lord Ashcroft with political journalist Isabel Oakeshott – is proving embarrassing for Mr Cameron, with lurid claims about weird Oxford initiation ceremonies involving dead pigs.
Advertisement
Cameron’s spokeswoman commented that she would not “dignify” the claim by offering a response to it, and most are speculating that Lord Ashcroft’s book, including the piggy tale, is an act of revenge for his snub by Cameron.
