WAS NEWSNIGHT POLL SKEWED TO MAKE DAVE MR POPULAR?

AS DAVID Cameron battled it out against David Davis for the party leadership in the autumn of 2005, help came from an unlikely quarter.

American pollster Frank Luntz had been invited on to BBC’s Newsnight to test people’s reaction to clips of leadership candidates. Their response to the youthful and then little-known Cameron was off the scale — and proved a major turning point in Cameron’s favour.

‘I’ve never seen a turnabout like this!’ declared Luntz breathlessly. ‘We may have seen history being made.’ Luntz claimed the verdict of his focus group was unanimous. ‘Average voters, those who would consider voting Conservative, have spoken clearly and as one .... David Cameron was exactly what swing voters are looking for,’ he said.

Cameron’s team was ecstatic, rushing out triumphant press releases to print and broadcast media and distributing copies of Luntz’s polling to every MP.

In their haste, they overlooked copyright rules, running into trouble with BBC lawyers. They also breached parliamentary regulations by using an internal mailing system at Westminster to circulate footage, earning a rap over the knuckles from Commons authorities. Luckily, nobody found out.

The frenzy of activity paid off. Literally overnight, the young MP for Witney surged from rank outsider in the leadership contest to frontrunner.

As far as the BBC was concerned, Luntz was an impartial observer conducting an objective exercise. He did not declare any interest.

But all was not as it seemed. It has now emerged that Luntz had strong links with several members of Cameron’s campaign team, raising serious questions about the impartiality of the Newsnight piece.

He was at Oxford at the same time as both Boris Johnson and Michael Gove — two of Cameron’s earliest supporters — and knew both well.

After they graduated, Luntz took the pair to America to take part in debates. (He also knew Edward Llewellyn — Cameron’s old friend from the Conservative Research Department and his future chief of staff — who he says lived across the street from him in Oxford.)

Ironically, it would all be long