From Eton to Beaten?

There has always been a trace of the Asian knock-off about David Cameron. The kid down the street was making all the running with its New Labour logo, and the Conservatives wanted one too, but there was always the suspicion that you'd get a hundred yards down the track and the stitching would come out. With the climax of the Ashcroft debacle, the Nike Heir-to-Blair label is definitely starting to peel off.

This fiasco is hardly a -gate or a scandal, but it has certainly been a running sore. For months, Tory politicians straying unwarily in front of the cameras have repeatedly been forced to squirm miserably at the name of Michael "I-can-get-that-honour-for-you-wholesale" Ashcroft. Indeed, it is arguable that the value to Labour of this constant emasculation of Conservative speakers has been worth more to it than the final revelation: that Ashcroft did what any other businessman in his position would have done and protected his income from the Inland Revenue.

Quite frankly, if there's a businessman who cheerfully foregoes the tax loophole, I'm not sure I want him at the shoulder of political power, whispering and advising.

The problem is not what Ashcroft did or did not do. It's Cameron.

For months he and Hague have seemingly been hanging their heads and mumbling in a corner, hoping to God that they would never have to be forced to admit that Ashcroft was diddling the British taxpayer. Sordel cares little that the Conservatives have been so spineless, but it is terrible that they have been so unprepared. Like the MPs whose last vestige of protection - the wisp of lawn on their marble nudity - was the hope that their expenses would never be published, Cameron and co. appear to have been sleepwalking towards their doom.

Where was the bold counterattack that Cameron should have had in his back pocket, ready for this situation?

Instead, he simpered about his delight that Lord Ashcroft had decided, voluntarily (and the people at the Oxford English Dictionary will be examining this new definition for future validity), to 'fess up to his private tax arrangements. Yes, Cameron looked delighted. (Delighted, adj., experiencing the sensation of dejection appropriate to one unrepentant yet discovered in wrongdoing).

So, now Gordon Brown is in possession of a retort that will be crafted by his speechwriters for the live debates. Here are some he can have for free:

"Where was his concern for our brave fighting men and women in Afghanistan when he took for his political campaigns money that ought to have been paid to equip them?"

"Let him lecture me on the good stewardship of the public finances once he has control over the money flowing, unscrutinised, into the coffers of his own party."

"His only clear policy is to maintain a system of honours that he has shown himself all too ready to manipulate to his party's financial ends."

"It is a strange campaigner for Education whose own knowledge of Geography led him to believe that Belize was in the British Isles."

And so on.

Haplessness is an unattractive quality in a politician. This is a very bad time for Cameron to make it his most prominent quality.