The name Michael Ashcroft is spat out like a curse whenever it is uttered on the Labour benches. David Cameron may be an annoyingly effective enemy, George Osborne a tricksy strategist — but there is something about Lord Ashcroft that has earned him a special place in Labour demonology. This is why last week’s decision by the Electoral Commission to investigate donations made by one of His Lordship’s companies is being quietly celebrated as a breakthrough that could finally torpedo the engine room of David Cameron’s electoral operation.
A substantial bounty is at stake. Some £4.5 million has been donated to the party by Bearwood Corporate Services, one of Lord Ashcroft’s businesses, which the Tories will be forced to hand over if the money is judged to have come from overseas sources. Given the glacial pace of such investigations, this could easily happen just before an election. For the Labour MPs who lodged the complaint, a double whammy is now possible: depriving the Tories of campaign funds at the last minute, and finally drawing blood from the seemingly untouchable Lord Ashcroft. The latter is, by some margin, the more appetising prospect.
To understand why Lord Ashcroft is the devil incarnate to so many Labour MPs, one must (odd as it seems) forget his money. The party’s current co-treasurers, Michael Spencer and Stanley Fink, are expected to be able to stump up an eight-figure sum between them, if need be. Mr Cameron does not lack donors. What he does lack is warriors of Lord Ashcroft’s calibre and battle-hardened experience. For this billionaire and his closely knit team have transformed the party’s campaigning division from a rusty, misfiring blunderbuss to a finely honed machine, set to claim at least 125 scalps at the next general election.
When Labour last went to the country in 2005, Lord Ashcroft had broken away from the Tory leadership, dismayed at Michael Howard’s decision to classify 164 constituencies as target seats when all polling suggested no more than 25 were winnable. Rather than retire to Nice in a huff, he decamped to his private office and started funding his own freelance Tory target seats campaign. After the election was lost he wrote what he thought would be a farewell note to the party, a pamphlet called Smell the Coffee. The official Tory campaign had been a vote-losing disaster, he argued, the cry of a party without purpose or direction.
To his amazement, Mr Cameron subsequently asked him to come back and to bring his renegade operation with him as a legitimate force in Conservatives headquarters — this time, with party money. There he has been granted almost complete autonomy. Since his return, he has built a network of 50 full-time campaigners, replacing the old system where almost all Tory agents were sheltering in the safest seats. Ashcroft brought with him two lieutenants, Gavin Barwell and Stephen Gilbert. His fiefdom has come to be widely recognised as the best-run part of Conservative central office (which is not, alas, saying much).
The Ashcroft strategy has been to find candidates for marginal seats immediately, rather than six months before an election, as had been the case previously. Successful applicants had to provide a business plan, and start campaigning at once. If they wanted more money, they had to prove to Lord Ashcroft personally that it would be put to good use. He checked up on them, commissioning secret polls asking voters how much they have heard from their local Tory. In this way, he had them all dancing a jig.
Quietly, this has created two political weather zones. In opinion polls, the Tories now do about five points better in marginal seats, where British elections are decided, than they do nationally. Gordon Brown found this out to his horror when he commissioned one such survey of swing seats, just before he cancelled the election-that-never-was in autumn 2007. The ‘Ashcroft Effect’, as it was known in Number 10, meant that a hung parliament was a distinct possibility — even if the national polls pointed towards a Labour win. The Prime Minister found out, embarrassingly late in his planning, that he had been comprehensively outmanoeuvred.
This was not, of course, all Lord Ashcroft’s sorcery. The unwinding of what was once the Blair effect played a part — as did the growing taste for anti-Brown tactical voting. Some of Ashcroft’s initiatives had faulty starts: money took too long reaching candidates and the computer system he instigated, Merlin, remains over budget and behind schedule. But to the scores of Labour MP being chased by a well-funded Tory upstart, the temptation to blame Lord Ashcroft has been overwhelming. The need to ‘do something’ about him has never been more urgent.
Ashcroft reciprocates this animosity — and then some. Those inside Tory headquarters often reflect that a billionaire can do anything he wants with his life. This one chooses to spend his time and money hunting Labour MPs like foxes. At the last Conservative conference in Birmingham, he took special delight in attending the Guardian’s party, waving his glass at various figures whom he believed would like him dead. He refuses to answer any questions remotely connected to his tax status, as if he is daring his enemies to find something unpleasant. ‘You have to admire his defiance,’ says one Cameroon aide, ‘even if it costs us.’
Almost every month, Mr Cameron is asked if Lord Ashcroft is based in Britain for tax purposes. ‘You’ll have to ask him,’ he replies — and those who do get no answer. Lord Ashcroft’s allies say that answering this question would beget four new questions, magnifying the issue rather than closing it down. He once said that, if a law was passed requiring all peers to be domiciled, ‘you would still see my smiling face.’ So it is entirely possible that he already pays British taxes, but sees no reason to share this information with his persecutors.
It is often asked why Mr Cameron keeps his deputy chairman, given the incoming fire he attracts. The answer is that Lord Ashcroft has become indispensable. His target seats team has been put in charge of by-elections (it was responsible for the victories in Henley and Crewe & Nantwich) and will mastermind the local government election campaign in June. They call the shots over polling, set themes for campaigns and make regular presentations to the general election committee chaired by George Osborne.
Those who are determined to be rid of Lord Ashcroft need only wait until after the election. I am told that he has made it clear that he has no desire for ministerial office, nor any wish to hang around Tory central office once the party is back in power. If today’s polls translate into tomorrow’s election results, half of all Labour MPs (and two thirds of all Liberal Democrat members) will lose their seats. His work will be done. Labour MPs will not have Ashcroft to kick around any more. But thanks to his lethal handiwork, there will be almost certainly be far fewer of them left to do any kicking at all.
Comments