Sabotage
Tory Dominic Grieve blocked MP Gordon Prentice’s persistent probe into possible Tory sleaze in the Commons yesterday.
The self-righteous Tories who condemned Peter Hain before his investigation used a parliamentary gag to frustrate Prentice’s search for the truth on possible Tory shenanigans.
The unanswered question is whether Tory mega-donor Lord Ashcroft is legally entitled to fund candidates in marginal seats and upset the fair balance of funding. The purpose of electoral spending laws is to ensure that rich parties cannot buy seats by spending more than their opponents.
Lord Ashcroft paid £280,000 in donations to 33 candidates in marginal constituencies in the first three months of 2005. As a result, 11 of these candidates unseated the Labour MP and five Tory marginals were saved.
It transpired that this was just part of Ashcroft's contribution. He had also loaned the party £3.6m. A consortium of donors, including Ashcroft, the casino tycoon Lord Steinberg and the car importer Robert Edmiston, had funded 93 constituency campaigns.
According to research by Peter Bradley, who lost his seat in the Wrekin after a 5 per cent swing to the Tories, it turned out that, of the 36 gains, the consortium had targeted 24. In some seats, such as Bradley's own, the Conservatives outspent Labour tenfold. This was engineered by spending before the election campaigns began in earnest. The strict controls to limit spending per candidate to about £10,000 apply only during the campaign period.
Gordon Prentice in November pressed the head of the Civil Service to give him details, "I just want to know if Lord Ashcroft is a UK resident for tax purposes” 
We still do not know if Ashcroft has honoured pledges, made before he received his peerage, that he would return to the UK and pay income tax.
However in 2004, five years after the assurances were given, Ashcroft's main residence was declared in the House of Lords expenses register to be the central American tax haven of Belize, thousands of miles beyond the reach of HM Revenue and Customs. He has said that if ‘Home is where the heart is, my home is in Belize.”
Ashcroft has repeatedly declined to say where he does reside, however, and it is unclear whether he currently pays a penny in UK income tax. If he does not live here, or did not live here in 2005, then the Conservatives are guilty of taking illegal donations.
Gordon Prentice had a go at speed legislating yesterday by trying to get a bill through which insists that all MPs and Lords should be UK residents paying UK taxes. Not much to ask for. He made a brief speech and his former wife Bridget Prentice answered briefly for the Government.
If the matter had ended there, the bill
would have passed its second reading. But Tory Dominic Grieve sabotaged the bill by talking it out.
What sort of person could object to this reform? Only someone from a party with a lot to hide.
Gang agley
A day late but tonight I will be celebrating Burns Night with a few friends.
It’s a pleasure to honour a nation that has a poet as their hero - especially a poet who was a firm democrat with an understanding of the interdependence between humankind and wildlife. After this week it’s fitting that we contemplate those schemes that have ‘gang agley.’
But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best-laid schemes o mice an men
Gang aft agley,
An lea'e us nought but grief an pain,
For promis'd joy!
Still thou art blest, compar'd wi me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But och! I backward cast my e'e,
On prospects drear!
An forward, tho I canna see,
I guess an fear!
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