Cameron embarrassed by billionaire’s ‘revenge’ book

LONDON: A billionaire former Conservative politician made a salacious claim about British Prime Minister David Cameron's student days on Monday in an unauthorised biography that some media outlets said was written out of revenge.
Cameron smoked cannabis and took part in a sordid initiation rite for a male students society involving a sexual act with a pig's head, Michael Ashcroft said in the Daily Mail's advance serialisation of his book Call Me Dave.
The tabloid carried the single-word headline "Revenge!" over its front-page story on the claims in the book, co-written by political journalist Isabel Oakeshott.
But Oakeshott and Ashcroft, who remains active in the Conservatives and is a well-known pollster, denied that revenge was a motive for writing the book.
Writing in the newspaper, Ashcroft said he was disappointed that Cameron only offered him a "declinable" junior post after he formed a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats in 2010.
Ashcroft, who became a Conservative member of the House of Lords in 2000 and served as the party's treasurer and deputy chairman, had expected to be rewarded with a senior cabinet post.
"Despite my disappointment, my new book about Cameron is not about settling scores," he said.
Oakeshott told the BBC the book "would have caused far more damage" if they had released it before parliamentary elections in May or during next month's Conservative Party conference.
The alleged initiation rite took place at Oxford University at a meeting of the Piers Gaveston Society, which is notorious for its debauchery, the book quoted sources as saying.
Cameron's office gave no immediate response to the allegations, which are mockingly dubbed "pig-gate" by online commentators.
But the BBC quoted unidentified sources as saying Cameron had not joined the Piers Gaveston Society.
Cameron and other senior Conservatives from privileged backgrounds are known to have joined another notorious and secretive drinking and dining group at Oxford, the Bullingdon Club. – dpa