The Lord Ashcroft affair is rumbling on (what do you mean quite nicely?) as the election date draws nearer.
It strikes me that both the Tories and Labour have a funding-related crisis on their hands with Unite for the former and the non-dom Lord for the latter.
For Labour, it is largely an internal party issue. There is nothing illegal about being funded by unions after all. However, the public can’t help but be affected by the increasingly possible scenario that many members of the Unite union do not want their own party to win the next election and are staffing up the safe seats with many of their own in time for a lurch to the left in Opposition. A price worth paying to get rid of Gordon Brown perhaps.
For the Tories, the questions over Ashcroft drag on and currently dominate the BBC News website with William Hague under the spotlight. We already know that Hague was aware of Ashcroft’s non-dom tax status months before this whole issue broke a few weeks ago but there is now a suggestion that the Shadow Foreign Secretary knew more than he is currently letting on far earlier. Per The Guardian:
The papers published today suggest that Hague – at that time Tory leader – was kept informed about the negotiations in 2000 over Ashcroft's tax status, though he insisted today that he had not been asked about the tax element "as far as anyone involved can recollect".
If William Hague knew that Lord Ashcroft was a non-dom after having brokered, or even while brokering, the deal that clearly stated that Ashcroft must be a full UK resident in exchange for entry into the House of Lords, and has kept that knowledge with him the whole time, then he should resign. It doesn’t matter how genial the man is or how effective he would be as a Cabinet Minister, this is a question of integrity that, if found wanting, is too fundamental to sweep under the carpet.
Hague has tried to divert attention away from the key question by apologising for the non-issue of his saying that Ashcroft would pay tens of millions because the amount may only be millions. It’s not the size of the tax receipts that are in question but the timing of them.
Hague to go? It’d be a sad sight to see but if this issue unfolds as I reckon it will, Hague’s position will be untenable.
Does competition help the NHS?
25 minutes ago
13 comments:
I can't see why Hague would be vulnerable, having ploughed through the leaked documents. There appear to be two issues - residency and domicile. Ashcroft fulfiled the former and the latter was parked.
"It strikes me that both the Tories and Labour have a funding-related crisis on their hands with Unite for the former and the non-dom Lord for the latter."
I think formers and latters are mixed up Jeff
The rantings of Nick Robinson and aljabeeba are not that important.
The public thinks they are all up to no good, particulalru Ashcroft and that bloody union that is screwing up everyone's Easter break.
Refarding BA, what I learned from working for a national airline was that future ticket sales dry up and the leverage means airlines run out of cash quickly as even a small market share change has a knock on effect. Cash flow is critical. Why fly BA when Virgin will not strike?
It brought the airline (Ansett)down and it collapsed, by losing around 4 or 5% marketshare and the unions did not at that stage allow cutbacks on services and staff.
They whinged when it fell over of course..... learnt the hard way.
The story is truly fascinating but for another day. Lovely chat on a Melbourne golf course with an "offical inspector" on the finances confirmed what I already knew happened on Level 23 at HQ.
All the fuss about Ashcroft is over an entirely tangential issue: the fact that he is a non-dom. Who cares? What relevance does his tax status have?
Concerning Hague, surely the only that matters is "how effective he would be as a Cabinet Minister".
Jeff. Of course the matter of Lord Ashcroft is going to rumble on. Not because he has done anything wrong but because the Labour smear machine wants it to rumble on and they have the ear of a compliant BBC. You should be well aware of their tactics vis a vis the SNP. If you want an object lesson in how Labour sets out to destroy it's opponents then I recommend that you read Ashcroft's book Dirty Politics, Dirty Times. It is available in PDF format on his web site. He at least had the resolve and the resources to fight back and did so successfully.
Jeff,
Your last two posts are very closely related as they display perfectly how Labour try to manipulate the news agenda to suit their partisan needs.
In one, Labour are trying to close down a perfectly legitimate debate about what influences (and I use the word in its broadest sense deliberately) Stephen Purcell was under while presiding over what looks like increasingly dodgy decisions, especially in respect of City Building.
In the other, Labour are trying to extend a debate over the tax status of a Tory donor which breaks no rules and which several Labour donors also enjoy. This nonsense about who knew whether Ashcroft was a non-dom or not is utter fluff - it makes no difference what his status is so what difference does it make who knew what his status was or is?
So, on one hand berating anyone who dares to ask a legitimate question of their behaviour and, on the other, indulging in extended muck-raking over matters of no importance when it suits them.
Total and utter hypocrisy and totally and utterly typical of a party that has no positive policy agenda to talk about.
I cannot see why Hague should go as Ashcroft agreed to be resident for UK tax (i.e all income arising in UK is taxable). Domicile issues are different to being resident and from what I have read the agreement was for him to be resident. That is what he agreed to be rather than being non-resident/not ordinarily resident to UK tax. I don't know why I am defending a Tory ....
On your earlier thread I read that some people think that Mr T Connery (aka Sean) is a 'tax exile' and pays no UK tax. Not so, he is liable to UK tax on income arising on his UK income (mostly royalties and any investment income and pensions)no ifs or buts about it; is just his income outhwith the UK that cannot be taxed here.
"Is Hague's position approaching untenability? "
No, because...
"If William Hague knew that Lord Ashcroft was a non-dom after having brokered, or even while brokering, the deal that clearly stated that Ashcroft must be a full UK resident "
...it didn't.
I don't know if anyone saw Angus Robertson's speech on prime-minister's questions yesterday , when allot were shouting " Sean Connery " over and over . well i thought i would raise this point . Sean Connery earned his money legally by working for a living, and has donated £30,000 to the SNP since 2001.
Convicted fraudster Michael Brown donated £2.4 million of stolen money to the FibDems using a front company in London, which the party has consistently refused to pay back to Brown's victims.
Phil Willis, Harrogate MP, seems to be leading the heckling - how much did his re-election campaign benefit from a fraudster's millions?
This article sounds like a Labour Party press release!
Anon, agreed, it smacks of desperation, labour's new cat call is that other parties are truing to 'smear' it - utter poppycock.
I think that's the first time I've seen Sm753 defend the Tory's, is there an election in the offing?
They all come out of the woodwork in the end.
Jeff, Ashcroft has been a long time target of Labour because he donated to the Conservatives when no one else would. The fact that we have spent more time highlighting and focusing on a man who could not hope to gain any government influence during this period while ignoring the many who donate to those in power speaks volumes.
Check out tonight's Telegraph story on UNITE funding of the current government. The SNP got roasted for party funding auctions of lunches at Holyrood. There are UNITE funded employee's sitting right at the heart of Downing Street, and helping their campaign from the corridors of government instead of the Labour party.
I knew about the Trade Union Modernisation Fund, but I didn't know anything about the Trade Union Learning Fund until tonight.
Add up the taxpayer funding that Brown hands out to these organisations, and then compare it to the figure donated by the two largest Unions to the Labour party.
This is pretty shocking, and almost total silence.
Anon @ 20:01
Nice bit of copypasta there, fortunately a Clydeside aristo like myself is always happy to see his scintillating thoughts distributed as widely as possible ;)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aKOCD5sxLk
Post a Comment