David Cameron faced a new row this weekend after a prospective Muslim parliamentary candidate claimed that the Tories had tried to woo him with the offer of a peerage.

In an article in today’s Sunday Times, Ali Miraj apparently contradicts claims by Cameron that it was Miraj who had sought a peerage.

The investment banker, 32, says that not only was he approached by the Tories in 2005 to consider becoming a Muslim peer — shortly after the July 7 terror attacks on London — but he had also had similar discussions with Cameron this year.

He suggests the Tories were seeking to exploit his ethnic background after the bombings and says he rejected the overture in 2005 because “I have never upheld playing the ‘race’ card”.

His comments threaten to reignite the row over Cameron’s leadership and distract from attempts to reverse the party’s slide in the polls. Last week the Tory leader struck Miraj off the party’s approved list of candidates after he had publicly criticised Cameron’s leadership, “gimmickry” and “obsession with PR”.

Cameron said Miraj had made his criticisms public only after his request for a peerage had been rebuffed at a meeting with the Tory leader.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4, Cameron said: “I think listeners will draw their own conclusions about someone who one day asks for a peerage . . . and the next minute launches a great attack on the leader of the Conservative party.”

Miraj says in today’s article: “No ‘demand’ for a seat in the House of Lords was made, no blackmail tactics were employed.” He claims he had discussed a peerage with Cameron last January and had turned down the prospect of a seat in the Lords two years ago.

Miraj threatens to name the shadow minister responsible for making the previous peerage offer if the Conservatives “elect to have selective amnesia on this issue”.

The minister is understood to be one of the four women in the shadow cabinet.

Miraj is a qualified chartered accountant who became a Tory councillor in 1998 and has since fought two elections.

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