The Tories and Lord Ashcroft – stupidity rather than wrongdoing?
Peter Hoskin 9:12am
So the Lord Ashcroft story is back on the airwaves, courtesy of a document leaked to the BBC. That document shows William Hague was "satisfied" with the discussions about Ashcroft's undertakings in 2000 – so the Tories wheeled the shadow foreign secretary onto the Today programme to explain himself to Evan Davis. Three things struck me:
i) Stupidity rather than wrongdoing. When the Ashcroft story first broke a couple of weeks ago, Labour seemed eager to turn it into one of Tory wrongdoing – they called for inquiries left, right and centre (indeed, there's one taking place today), in the apparent hope that they'd find something improper had gone on.
But the more that's emerged, the less likely that has become. As Hague stressed earlier, today's leaked documents highlight that various figures and bodies – from Sir Hayden Phillips to Downing Street – were either satisifed or aware that Ashcroft was meeting the terms of his undertaking by becoming resident in the UK. There's little question that Ashcroft was doing things more or less by the book.
But, at best, the Tories are coming out of this looking increasingly naive. If we take Hague's word for it that he only knew about Ascroft's non-dom status a "few months" ago, then the question remains of why he didn't look into it earlier. Indeed, it's telling that Hague himself said, "we can be criticised for that." And his excuses on the matter were, at times, extraordinarily weak. He even suggested that he didn't fully look into the siutation when he was Tory leader because he had "1001 other problems" to deal with – so he was only interested in whether Lord Ashcroft was fulfilling his residency obligation.
From the Tories' perspective, though, this does slightly defuse the issue for them. Evan Davis was left exasperated: "It does seem remarkable that you should leave this issue to the beginning of the election campaign to deal with it." Which is hard to disagree with. But while stupid strategy may be worrying from a potential future government, it is hardly, in this case, a crime.
ii) Tory boldness. Despite those less-than-convincing excuses, Hague took most of the interview on the front foot. He kicked off by insinuating that the government had leaked this document to the Beeb; proof of a "culture of leak, half-truth and spin." And he went on to say that the Tories would publish the document in its entirity, as it "blows the idea that this was a secret Tory plot out of the water". Would that they were this direct on the issue a few years ago.
iii) Booooring. At the end of the interview, Nick Robinson said that families at their breakfast tables will be "scratching their heads" over why the Tories didn't clear this up sooner. Maybe so. But I think they'll be scratching their heads more at all the financial lingo that was flung around. "Non-dom ... dom ... resident for tax purposes ... non dom ... dom ... permanent resident ... dom, dom, dom" – you get the picture. To my mind, this is one of the reasons why the story didn't really jolt the polls a couple of weeks ago: even if people can pick up on a general mood that something's not right, it's just not sexy enough to tune into properly.
UPDATE: More here from the Telegraph on Hague admitting to "mistakes" over handling the affair.
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Michael Holmes
March 18th, 2010 9:31am Report this commentHague was right.This stale story was revived with or without the complicity of the BBC and in the interests of balance we await an item on the full list of non dom donors to the labour party as promised by Peter mandleson. Let us not hold our breath
Irene
March 18th, 2010 9:38am Report this commentThis is REALLY boring now.
Since when has a Peerage been given with certain strings attached or assurances made or promises or what ever.
You are either given it or you are not and that is in the hand of the PM of the day ie Blair.
Chris
March 18th, 2010 9:38am Report this commentSo, it appears that what you're saying is that Hague is either stupid or a liar. Either way he is not fit for government. He should resign as shadow foreign secretary.
Pete Hoskin
March 18th, 2010 9:41am Report this commentChris: I'm saying that he, and the Tory party, handled this issue stupidly. It's fair to say that other politicians have done stupid things without resigning - particularly when they don't really affect the nation.
Willie de Peepul
March 18th, 2010 9:46am Report this commentI thought 'Wee Willie' did an excellent job vs Evan this morning. Although there were times when both of them were gobbling over their words in their enthusiasm to put their respective cases.
Andy
March 18th, 2010 9:49am Report this commentOooh Chris. Would that any of the incumbent shambles resign for lying or being stupid.
There'd be no government left.
Moraymint
March 18th, 2010 9:52am Report this commentChris
March 18th, 2010 9:38am
Virtually every member of this government is both stupid and a liar, so where does that leave us in terms of individuals resigning?
Willie de Peepul
March 18th, 2010 9:53am Report this comment@Chris
9:38am
Chris, don't be naive; Hague's not stupid and, should he ever make Foreign Secretary, he's going to find an expertise in obfuscatory language an asset. Handling items like this is an insignificant distraction from his day job, which is, you should remember, shadowing the Millipede.
Richard
March 18th, 2010 9:55am Report this commentThe day of judgement is here.
So Vague admits on BBC that he knew Ashcroft would not pay full tax 10 years ago.... then he admits on BBC that he only knew Ashcroft was a non Dom a few months ago. which one is the lie you choose.
Cameron says he only found out a month ago and forced Ashcroft to out himself ...this 3 days before the Freedom of information request was going to out him anyway.
Papers released last month proved Vague lied to the Government and he has admitted it today. He is on record many times perpetuating this lie again and again.
There are many things that William has to answer not least how he aquired his 20 million pound fortune. A boy from a modest family meets billionaire and makes said billionaire a Lord- then discovers his skills in finance have turned his fortunes around and now he is a tory grandee....eee by gum lad thats fishy.
This man has not one shred of credibility left.
How can you demand the removal of one crook and liar by proposing to replace him with another.....it's madness he must go now!
Slim Jim
March 18th, 2010 9:56am Report this commentChris @ 0938: Using your logic, the same should apply to Brown and his, ahem, 'mistakes' at the Chilcott Inquiry.
Alex
March 18th, 2010 10:17am Report this commentNeither. Just boring.
Even my non-political wife said, "Why are the BBC still going on about this?"
Ben Wright
March 18th, 2010 10:34am Report this commentThis scandal shows how bankrupt our political system is.
The only solution lies in adopting the Hayden Phillips recommendations.
All major political parties have been scarred by inaction.
It’s time something was done about it.
Public trust would be holding politicians to the Nolan Principles in Public life – selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership.
The Jury Team want to cap individual donations to political parties at £50,000. http://www.juryteam.org/p23-cap-donations.php
This was what Sir Hayden recommended in the first place and is the only real solution.
Time for action on this now!
Vulture
March 18th, 2010 10:39am Report this commentDid I hear Whelan being similarly grilled on the BBC yesty ( in the interests of even-handedness and impartiality of which the Beeb is so proud)?
No, I did not. Instead he was offered a platform to wax indignant abt Clegg's comparison of him with Ashcroft.
He's quite right. There is no comparison. One (Ashcroft) is a rich man who has poured loads of dosh into making sure that the most criminal, lying, destructive Govt to have ever besmirched this country is consigned to oblivion. And contributed to worthy projects like Crimestoppers and honouring VC heroes while he's about it.
The other (Whelan) is a duplicitous little weasel who's stock in trade is lies, libel, bullying and bluster. I can't wait until the nation wipes Whelan and his loathsome crew off its collective shoe.
Alex
March 18th, 2010 10:39am Report this commentSo it's the old "fool or knave" question which has destroyed the credibility of many a politician, and is now slowly strangling Hague.
BTW, why are the Tories trying to censor the BBC on Ahcroft?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ashcrofts-lawyers-silence-panorama-1923210.html
stephen
March 18th, 2010 10:49am Report this commentRichard Boring!
The Man
March 18th, 2010 10:52am Report this commentThe most damaging aspect of this is that it undermines any claims the Tories make about being in favour of transparency. They should have confronted Ashcroft themselves and put the story in the public domain, instead of having it dragged out of them by painful degrees. And if they did (confront him) and he refused to let them do so, then they should have refused to take any more of his money. They tell us that it amounts to no more than 5% of their funding so it's hardly as if they'd miss it. If David Cameron wants to rebuild trust in politics, then he needs to walk the walk as well as he talks the talk.
John
March 18th, 2010 10:55am Report this commentHow convenient to drop the Unite/Labour story and Brown's underfunding of the MOD in order to get back to Ashcroft.
I expect the Today Programme to lead on the Ashcroft story until the BA dispute is settled.
Mandelson must be purring this morning at this demonstration of his ability to manipulate the news agenda.
Liz Brown
March 18th, 2010 10:59am Report this commentOh, for Heaven's sake.............
Moriarty
March 18th, 2010 11:02am Report this commentThe People Who Look After Richard: "There are many things that William has to answer not least how he aquired his 20 million pound fortune"
Lessons from Peter Mendacioussen perhaps?
Alex
March 18th, 2010 11:03am Report this commentIf its' all above board, why is Ashcroft trying to censor the BBC?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ashcrofts-lawyers-silence-panorama-1923210.html
Neil Turner
March 18th, 2010 11:11am Report this commentChris
When I started work in 1978, I was working with an Jack, an old Scottish gent. I had just made my first error in a proper job, and was distraught
Jack took me on one side, and told me that that the man who never made a mistake never made anything
Good advice then. Good advice now.
It was a mistake. It wasn't deliberate, cynical, or intended to mislead. Quite the opposite of the majority of New Labour's cynical manipulation
Richard
March 18th, 2010 11:15am Report this comment@Moriarty,
I see openess and transparency only for little people..like taxes.
Presumably Vagues millions are just the trappings of being out of power....imagine what he could do if he actually got into power....wow it's amazing.
Nicholas
March 18th, 2010 11:16am Report this commentRichard, how much do you get paid by the NHS (and the taxpayer) to post Labour propaganda here? Since you only arrived 15 years ago are you domiciled or non-domiciled for tax purposes?
As taxpayers we have a right to know.
phabitis
March 18th, 2010 11:35am Report this commentAs well as enobling Ashcroft, didn't Blair enoble a lot of people who paid large sums to the Labour Party?
Does Labour really want to resurrect the Cash for Peerages scandal again?
I think we need a quote from Lord Levy...
Richard
March 18th, 2010 11:35am Report this comment@Nicholas,
Ashcroft says you don't have a right to know thats why he is suppressing media reports and documenties in the courts.
Get a FoI and I will tell you 3 days before it's due to be published.
Chris
March 18th, 2010 11:41am Report this commentAs a Chris who comments here occasionally, and can't figure out how to change his commenting name to something more disctinctive, I'd just like to stress that I'm not the idiot who commented above; I'm another idiot entirely. Boy, Labour think sleaze is permanently useful anti-Tory weapon, even when there's no sleaze, and they have the undoubted fraudster Mandelson as the real PM. And Richard, for God's sake put your head in a bucket three times and take it out twice.
Rosencrantz
March 18th, 2010 11:52am Report this commentRichard, you say "At the end of the interview, Nick Robinson said that families at their breakfast tables will be "scratching their heads" over why the Tories didn't clear this up sooner". Can anyone really think that families sit round the breakfast table listening to "Today"? Apparently so. Nick Robinson really needs to get out a bit more ...
stephen
March 18th, 2010 11:55am Report this commentNon Doms are not just a feature in the Tory party but also Labour set out below is a piece on the BBC at the time of Michael Foot's death. Perhaps some of the CH-er's might choose to be a little censorious about Ashcroft !
Two political stories have dominated most of this week - Lord Ashcroft and Michael Foot - though there is no apparent link between them.
Or is there? In revealing that Lord Ashcroft is a "non-dom" for tax purposes, the Conservatives rightly point out that several big Labour donors are non-doms too, most notably the industrialist Lord Paul.
Now a colleague has drawn my attention to this passage from Kenneth Morgan's great biography of Michael Foot, where Mr Morgan writes of the fallout from the closure of the Ebbw Vale steel works in 1975, where Foot was MP, and whilst he was also Employment Secretary:
"He [Foot] persuaded a British-based Indian industrialist, Swraj Paul, Chairman of National Gas Tubes, to invest in the constituency by setting up the most advanced spiral weld steel mill in Europe, with the aid of funding from the British government and the EEC - Foot, an arch anti-European, was fully prepared to receive money from Europe for a good cause.
"Swraj Paul [later Lord Paul] had earlier helped to arrange Foot's first visit to India in 1973, and his giving the Krishna Menon Lecture, in honour of the old socialist guru of the thirties, in November 1976. Foot 'a man who inspires trust through his integrity', was always a hero to him.
"Swraj Paul's plant was opened on 22 November 1978 by no less a person than Mrs Ghandi. The Ebbw Vale economy continued to limp along."
It might also be added that when Indira Ghandi declared a state of emergency back in India in the late 1970s, Foot publicly came to her defence, thereby tarnishing his reputation as a great libertarian"
This also goes to show that not everything that comes out of the BBC is NuLabour spin!
Moriarty
March 18th, 2010 11:59am Report this comment@Richard.
Don't worry your hero will have the same opportunities on the speaking circuit after May 7. I imagine that the Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club will be prepared to pay literally dozens of pounds for Brown's after dinner speeches.
echo34
March 18th, 2010 12:05pm Report this commentRichard,
In the interests of balance, explain where Mandelsons' accumulation of assets originated from please?
In order to appear a reasonable sane person in debate, it is normally a given that one acknowledges both sides of an argrument.
The fact that all of your posts never use this method of debate shows up your ignorance and heavy-handed bias.
Several times you have been asked in a polite way to explain what your beloved party will do over a topic but your blinkered postings just show you up for what you are, a pig ignorant muppet with no talent for (or reason to) debate.
I await your hurt feelings, "poor me i cant spell" style response.
Nicholas
March 18th, 2010 12:26pm Report this commentRichard, LOL I don't want to know about Ashcroft I want to know about you! I don't pay Ashcroft's wages and his tax avoidance is a different proposition from you spending taxpayer-funded NHS time posting New Labour propaganda. You are all over this website like a rash. Is your NHS job essential? Do your NHS bosses know how much time you spend engaged on New Labour party political propaganda? Are NHS frontline services affected by it? Are there patients on a waiting list or patiently sitting in a waiting room because you spend so much time here on Gordon Brown's behalf? Or do you have one of those New Labour sponsored non-jobs? This appears to warrant further investigation by the Taxpayers Alliance as you seem to be a classic example of the politicised public sector wasting our money.
paulg
March 18th, 2010 12:38pm Report this commentMoriarty@don't be foolish they are not going to offer currency; they will offer as much beer and cheap spirit as he can drink- safe in the knowledge that the great leader does not drink.
Verity
March 18th, 2010 1:09pm Report this commentMoraymint says: "Virtually every member of this government is both stupid and a liar."
And ugly. Try to think of an attractive socialist. All right, Jacques Chirac was OK, but he was French. (Still is.)
Vulture
March 18th, 2010 1:41pm Report this commentAhem....Verity...jacques-ass was (nominally at least) a conservative.
You may be thinking of the fascist, Vichyiste, adulterous and quite probably murderous Francois Mitterrand.
Naomi Muse
March 18th, 2010 2:29pm Report this commentThe brokers men are shouting, 'To you from me, over!'
Ashcroft was agreed by the Cabinet Office
The details were given to Tory HQ
The details were given to Downing Street
So Gordo the disingenuous was making smoke where there was no fire whatsoever, because he and his henchmen knew the answer was in the Downing Street files.....
Storm in a teacup and something else that Gordo misremembered, like the Defence spending cuts?
There is no integrity in this awful person.
MaisieW
March 18th, 2010 3:00pm Report this commentAlex Lord Ashcroft has given a writ to the Indy, maybe thats why they feel sore, you can`t tell lie`s and get away with it
Alex
March 18th, 2010 4:16pm Report this comment@ MaisieW... "Lord Ashcroft has given a writ to the Indy, maybe thats why they feel sore, you can`t tell lie`s and get away with it"
Maisie, you're a bit ambiguous here.
Who can't tell lies and get away with it? Hague? Ashcroft? Cameron? the Independent?
Anyway, you confirm that Ashcroft's throwing writs about trying to stop publication... what's he got to hide?
Jane
March 18th, 2010 4:21pm Report this commentStill, it serves it's purpose, which is to swing the spotlight from Whelan and back on to the Tories. So utterly transparent. And so completely boring. Don't think I can stand another six weeks of this....
TomTom
March 18th, 2010 4:51pm Report this commentPolitics needs rich men and politicians are readily available to be bagmen. Of course William Hague had no idea for Ashcroft is a really honorable man of unimpeachable integrity......and so it goes on....why throw dirt at Mandelson or Lord Paul.....we know politicians are very naive when it comes to money and will prostitute themselves in any way to please rich men
Chuck Unsworth
March 18th, 2010 8:13pm Report this commentAlex
Typical NuLab fifth columnist garbage. Issuing writs does not mean that the issuer has something to hide - quite the contrary because the issuer is going to have to stand up in court and prove that the recipient is lying. If the Indy has any balls it'll call Ashcroft and raise him. But that ain't going to happen.
Andy Leeds
March 18th, 2010 8:45pm Report this commentLord Ashcroft has done nothing improper nor wrong. He did not undertake to become domicile. However the real questions that need to be asked is why were special conditions applied to Lord Ashcroft - a Conservative supporter - and have not been applied to other peers from other political parties. That is the real story.
daniel maris
March 18th, 2010 10:13pm Report this commentIt's clear the Tories made a choice: to depend on a less than transparent multi-millionaire based in Belize rather than turn themselves into a populist party supported by the people.
It was a damaging choice and they live with the damage.
TomTom
March 18th, 2010 10:19pm Report this commentthe issuer is going to have to stand up in court and prove that the recipient is lying
Exactly the opposite under English libel law....
Tigas
March 20th, 2010 12:32pm Report this comment@Rosencrantz
You're right to question the idyllic picture posed by Nick Robinson of 'families' gathered around the dinner table discussing this. Not since the 70s has that activity happened! That said, it's more likely that people sat their tables reading the paper will be wondering how many more skeletons will lollop out of the party political cupboards to show change is desperately needed to control this blatant abuse of the parameters for donations to the BigBad3 parties!! I like the £50k limit suggested by Hayden Phillips http://tinyurl.com/Cap-Donations
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