And another thing…

LORD ASHCROFT – sterling chap. Thoroughly decent cove, if you ask me. Done absolutely nothing wrong. Salt of the earth, and all that.

So there’s absolutely no reason why any Tory MP or candidate should be embarrassed or shy about coming clean about whether their campaign has been funded, directly or indirectly, by him. Is there?

Tories’ Pavlovian reaction to “Ashcroft” is to bark “Unions!”. Fair enough. I am happy to publish details of all donations received by my campaign from any trade union (must check if I’ve received any recently – I fear not but you never know).

Will Tory candidates now do the same re Ashcroft money?

SO DAVE plans to legislate to force MPs and peers to prove they’re UK tax-payers or lose their seats.

You would have to be certifiably and terminably bewildered to fall for that, surely? Zac Goldfinger admits to being a “non dom”, says he plans to continue that status right up until the election (because he’s not breaking any rules, right?) then does a U-turn and – inexplicably (because he wasn’t breaking any rules, was he?) – announces he’s giving up his non-dom status with immediate effect.

And then there’s Lord Ashcroft.

All very embarrassing for Dave. So how to recover lost ground? Easy: pretend that he’s going to be tough on his rich friends. But he can only do it once he’s Prime Minister, you see, so the only way to bring these greedy, disreputable Tories to book is to… er, elect a Tory government. Genius!

Well, he may not be Prime Minister but Dave does have authority (it is claimed) within his own party. So why doesn’t he tell Lord Ashcroft to appear on the Today programme this week and announce, once and for all, whether or not he is resident in the UK for tax purposes – the condition, after all, on which his peerage was bestowed?

If this doesn’t happen we can draw one or both of two conclusions: either Dave doesn’t have any authority at all over his Lordship, and/or his Lordship does, indeed have something to hide.

Cameron doesn’t need a new law to force Ashcroft to come clean – he can force him, if he chooses. He can sack him from his job as the Tories’ deputy chairman. A failure to do so (or to force him publicly to clarify his tax status) will prove he hasn’t the backbone to run his own party, let alone the country.

AS USUAL, someone else has put a case more lucidly and intelligently than I managed. So I’ve used Stuart Sharpe’s excellent analysis of the PoliticsHome controversy as an opportunity to add him belatedly to my blogroll.

I had made the point in the thread to Iain’s post on the subject that Ashcroft’s purchase of PoliticsHome was comparable to a buy-out by Peter Mandelson. How would Conservative members of the PH100 panel have reacted to that, I wonder? But Stuart has a much sharper (ahem!) comparison

Iain Dale has attacked the resignations as ‘the worst kind of gesture politics’, but really there is more to it than that. One wonders how Tim Montgomerie would have reacted, for instance, if PoliticsHome had been bought by Unite – I’m not certain such a change of ownership would have been met with a simple shrug. It seems the biggest issue (for the more serious people) isn’t the money from Lord Ashcroft but the fact that Andrew Rawnsley and Martin Bright have withdrawn their support from the project.

I agree with the last point entirely: I have no problem with a Tory owning PoliticsHome; I have more (but not insurmountable) problems with Ashcroft owning it; but when senior and respected journalists lose faith in its impartiality, members of the PH100 panel cannot be expected to shore up its credibility.

Dear Freddie

I read with disappointment that a majority shareholding of PoliticsHome has been bought by Tory Party Vice-Chairman Lord Ashcroft. Given this development, and the consequent resignation of Andrew Rawnsley as its editor in chief, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the valuable and deserved reputation for neutrality and independence which PoliticsHome has built up has been sold along with the domain name.

I write to inform you, therefore, that I wish to resign from the PH100 panel of politicians and commentators.

Best wishes

Tom Harris

LABOUR MPs have been scratching their heads and wondering aloud why on earth the Justice Secretary Jack Straw has been so insistent on opposing a change to the law that would prevent non-UK residents from donating cash to political parties here.

There is, of course, much resentment at the fact that mulit-millionaire Lord Ashcroft was allowed to buy so many seats for the Tories at the last election, even when the circumstances of his tax arrangements aren’t as clear as most reasonable people might expect (there — that got past the lawyers okay…).

But until now Straw has opposed the change even though there are strong principled as well as political reasons for incorporating it in law.

He’s finally caved in, but why on earth didi it take so long? Much of the cash has already been spent in an attempt t buy David Cameron a majority at the next election, so this change will only have a major impact on the subsequent general election which, under the new rules will have to be fought on a level playing field — an idea fiercely opposed by the Tories.

“Officials’ advice” was written all over Jack’s previous opposition to this change and I’m glad he’s finally rejected it. But this is a change that should have been agreed ten years ago.

JUST back from BBC HQ in Glasgow, having wildly overestimated the time it would take to get there and back in the snow. For those not following me on Twitter, I was doing The Westminster Hour along with Ed Vaizey.

The final subject we talked about was Ashcroft, and Ed, decent cove though he is, persisted with the myth that Ashcroft envelopes simply balance the money given to local Labour Parties by the trade unions. Oh, if only! He also claimed, interestingly, that the Communications Allowance, which all MPs have, are an unfair advantage to incumbent MPs. Does this mean that Tory MPs don’t use it to issue annual reports, I wonder?

Anyway, the point of the studio discussion was that the government has apparently conceded that we can’t legislate to stop Ashcroft throwing tens of thousands of pounds at marginal constituencies in between elections because we can’t get a consensus with the Tories on the way forward. Now, there’s a surprise. My view is that when you have a majority, you don’t need a consensus, especially when there are plans afoot to buy votes in the great  American tradition.

Alas, even if the Commons were to agree with me, there’s not enough time, or enough Labour peers, to get it through the Lords. So, green light to Ashcroft and his chequebook.

IF YOU missed the excellent Dispatches programme, Cameron’s Money Men, on Channel 4 tonight, you can catch it again here for the next 30 days.

CONSERVATIVE Party treasurer and chief paymaster, Lord Ashcroft, is the subject of a fascinating piece of reporting in today’s Sunday Times.

There’s plenty for the party’s critics to get their teeth into. To me, the most damaging quote is this:

He was initially blocked for a peerage, but was made a peer in 2000 on the condition that he would become resident in the UK and hence start paying British taxes.

To this day he has not said whether he has honoured that pledge.

And there’s the rub: if Ashcroft actually had lived up to his promise, and had become resident in Britain, he would surely have said so a dozen times before now, wouldn’t he?