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Not everyone can afford to have dinner in the flat over the shop

Not least when the shop in question is Number 10 Downing Street

And your host is none other than the prime minister himself.

But there is now confirmation that David Cameron hosted not dinner parties but donor parties for the very very rich - just as his former treasurer had boasted when secretly filmed by the Sunday Times

By ending the game of "guess who came to dinner" the Conservatives will hope to have limited the damage this affair has already caused.

But they know they will also have reinforced precisely the image their opponents are so keen to reinforce: that they are the party of the wealthy

Still unanswered are questions about why the former Tory treasurer seemed at least willing to discuss channelling foreign cash to the Tories, even though the law allows donations only from UK-registered citizens or companies.

And what influence donors cash has bought .

Only a few weeks ago the prime minister told a group of school children that he lived in "in a little flat, a very nice flat actually, above number 11 Downing Street... but what I get up to in there, that's private".

How he must wish that was still true.