Back to the pocket borough

Yes, it's the Lord Ashcroft saga that has turned up yet again to demonstrate just how far a good Tory will go to secure a few bob for the party. And that seems to be quite a long way, all things considered.

Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde, better known to most of our readers, one suspects, as Brenda Dean, ex-Sogat general secretary and chairwoman of the Housing Corporation, told MPs yesterday that, as a member of the vetting committee that approved Lord Ashcroft's peerage, she had been shocked to learn 10 years later that he was non-domiciled for tax purposes.

She said the political honours scrutiny committee that vetted Lord Ashcroft had been clear that it wanted him to be a permanent resident.

The Baroness added: "It looks like the commitments and undertakings given were not carried through."

Lady Dean was not the only person to give evidence to the parliamentary inquiry on the granting of the noble Lord's peerage.

And listening to Sir Hayden Phillips, the Whitehall mandarin who oversaw the granting of the peerage, was like taking a peek into a set of dusty attitudes that most people thought and hoped were long dead.

Sir Hayden, who at the time oversaw peerages as Clerk of the Crown in Chancery, agreed that "good chaps" would abide by an agreement and claimed that it had not been made "explicit" to him by the PHSC that it had concerns about where he was domiciled.

Now we may be getting a bit absent minded at the Morning Star in our 80th year but, asking around the office, no-one can remember any other issue in Lord Ashcroft's peerage than his domicile, which was an extremely high-profile question at the time.

One can only imagine that such mundanities didn't penetrate the rarified atmosphere of the gentlemans' clubs inhabited by top civil servants.

But one is surely entitled to expect that a senior civil servant would be aware of the controversy surrounding such a high-profile issue.

Especially since Michael Ashcroft had been twice refused a peerage in the past, partly because of concerns that he was a tax exile.

William Hague, who was then Tory leader and is now shadow foreign secretary, admitted yesterday that he had been wrong to declare that Lord Ashcroft would pay "tens of millions of pounds" more in tax as a result of the deal in 2000, a declaration that indicates the he, along with the peerages committee, believed that Lord Ashcroft would become fully domiciled.

In short, the whole issue has become a Tory exercise in rewriting history to cover Ashcroft's arse.

It wouldn't be necessary except that Lord Ashcroft is clearly reluctant to relinquish a peerage awarded to him under very dubious circumstances, to say the least, and the Tory Party is just as reluctant to upset him.

And that certainly isn't a surprise when one remembers that his company Bearwood Corporate Services has funnelled millions into the Tory Party's coffers to fund election battles in marginal seats.

Lord Ashcroft's company is reported to have made donations ranging from £5,000 to £27,230.08 to 19 swing seats in the 2005 general election.

While no-one could complain that these donations were illegal, their morality is certainly at issue.

The whole business reeks of privilege and the abuse of democracy by those who believe that they can buy their way into power.

It carries the stench of rotten and pocket boroughs, a poison which one might have wished consigned to history's dustbin many generations ago.

"Good chaps," buying peerages with donations, expat tax dodgers funding election campaigns - wasn't this all disposed of in the 20th century?

The answer to that seems to be a resounding No.