In today's Observer, Columnist Nick Cohen, under the headline How a celebrity pollster created Cameron, "reveals" that Cameron's election to the leadership of his party was influenced by the less-than-reputable methods of a "showbizz" pollster:

Through no fault of his own, show-business made Cameron leader of the opposition. David Davis had the strongest base among activists and MPs. The opinion polls declared Kenneth Clarke the frontrunner among the wider public. Neither man was a clear election winner, however. Cameron came from nowhere because Newsnight commissioned a focus group run by American pollster Frank Luntz that appeared to prove that the young politician could become extraordinarily popular and the Conservatives believed him. The desperation of the Tories in 2005 produced an election without precedent. The findings of a focus group drove a hitherto obscure politician to the leadership of a major political party. Not a focus group hired by party managers anxious to uphold the best interests of their cause, but by a broadcaster as interested in entertainment as reputable market research.

This is something well known in the Lib Dem blogosphere. Concerns were first raied by Millenium Dome, after the original Newsnight programme. Then, in April this year, Liberal Review questioned whether Cameron owed his leadership to Luntz. This culminated in a correspondence between Luntz and Liberal Review, summarised here.

Now, we know that Nick Cohen reads, and occasionaly comments on, Mike Smithson's Political Betting; and also that the Liberal Review expose was discussed there at length at the time.

A journalist writing a story and failing to acknowledge his sources? We'll let you decide. But Cohen has at least drawn the right conclusion, so we'll give him the last word:

Maybe it shouldn't be such a surprise that Mori reported in The Observer last week that Cameron's personal ratings had collapsed after his honeymoon period because voters didn't know what he believed in. The charge that he's an empty vessel isn't fair in my view, but if you are created by the entertainment industry, you must expect the public to treat what you say as mere showbiz.