Lib Dem shadow home secretary Chris Huhne answers Independent readers’ question in today’s paper. Here are three which caught NewsHound’s eye:
Why are you sticking it to Lord Ashcroft when your own leadership campaign was part-funded by a “non-dom”?
All parties take contributions from non-dom taxpayers, but the Liberal Democrats do not put them into the House of Lords where they can make law for the rest of us who pay full taxes. Nor do our Lords break solemn and binding commitments to become permanently resident and pay full taxes. Nor do our Lords fail to tell our leaders that they have renegotiated key commitments with the Revenue. As it happens, the Tory allegation that my leadership campaign was funded by a non-dom is not true. They were simply desperate to say something because of their own deep embarrassment over Lord Ashcroft.
Who is your best friend in parliament? Nick Clegg?
Now we are no longer rivals, I certainly count Nick as a friend. But one of the great things about the Lib Dem parliamentary group is that there are lots of great characters whom I am proud to call friends. I don’t think I have had any best friends since school!
Would your party prefer to work with a Labour or Conservative administration?
I am an economist, and that is like asking whether you would like to buy something in a supermarket without knowing the price. That may be a fun daytime TV game, but it is not the real world.
If Liberal Democrats were merely near substitutes for either Labour or the Conservatives, we would hardly have struggled all these years to build up an independent party. It would have been a lot easier for all of us to get elected as Labour or Tory MPs! We should work to get the most Liberal Democrat policy put into practice.
You can read the full Q&A with Chris here.
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8 Comments
So from that, it appears that Chris Huhne thinks there’s nothing wrong with political parties being funded by non-doms per se – that it becomes a problem only if those non-doms are actually members of the House of Lords or if there is some dishonesty involved.
And yet a few days ago he was telling us this:
The Conservatives’ biggest donor is a tax-dodger from Belize who has not paid a penny of British tax on the vast bulk of his estimated £1.1bn fortune held offshore. This raises extraordinary questions about the judgement of successive Tory leaders …
Considering how much time he’s had to plan what his position would be, in the event of the truth about Ashcroft coming out, this is a fine old shambolic, hypocritical mess.
You might have not noticed this, but the first line of your quote points out that Ashcroft is the Tory’s biggest donator. Chris Huhne here simply says that all parties accept donations from non-domiciled residents. Hardly hypocricy. If Ashcroft was not such a major donator, there would not have been a problem with him being a non-domicile.
Huw
Thanks for clarifying the position.
So it’s fine for a non-dom to be a donor, so long as he isn’t actually the biggest donor to any particular party.
And there was I hoping that at some point I might hear the words “The Liberal Democrats will not accept donations from non-doms in the future” …
The other stupendous irony here is that Chris Huhne claims in the interview that “the Tory allegation that my leadership campaign was funded by a non-dom is not true” – presumably because the donation in question was made through a company, Carrousel Capital, rather than directly by Bruno Sanglé-Ferrière.
But of course, if the same principle is applied to Ashcroft’s donations to the Tories, it makes nonsense of Huhne’s claim that “The Conservatives’ biggest donor is a tax-dodger from Belize …”, because the great bulk of the Ashcroft money was donated through Bearwood Corporate Services, and only about £112,000 by Ashcroft directly.
As politicians go, Huhne is definitely at the unscrupulous end when it comes to attacking his opponents. But of course Nick Clegg knows that only too well!
Anthony,
If your point is that we ought to do better, I wholeheartedly agree. Not only is it stupid and unprincipled to take money from non-doms and from an “unknown” like Michael Brown, it has done us much more harm than good. It has allowed the Tories to tar us all with the same brush.
If you are claiming that we are genuinely anything like as bad as the Tories, I totally disagree. The Tories have been bought by Ashcroft, lock stock and barrel. Ashcroft has gone on to buy the entire election by flooding the marginals. Ashcroft, along with the bankers, the gunslinging madrasas, and the fascist allies in Europe, is why we simply should not dream of electing a Tory government. That needs to be shouted from the rooftops, and it is a great pity that we have allowed minor issues like Michael Brown to cloud the message on that point!
David
I’m saying, principally, that Huhne is displaying the most blatant double standards in his attacks on the Tories. And I think that, considering that all the parties have taken substantial amounts of money from non-doms (and worse), no party should be trying to score political points on this issue.
As for whether the Lib Dems are anything like as bad as the Tories, I should like to think not, but I’m not convinced there is room for complacency. As I understand it, Ashcroft gave £5.2m to the Tories over a 6-year period, mainly through his company, whereas Brown gave £2.4m to the Lib Dems shortly before the 2005 election, also through his company.
On that basis I don’t really see how Ashcroft can be accused of trying to “buy the election” without the same thing applying to Brown. To be honest, the main practical difference seems to be that the Tories have made more effective use of the Ashcroft millions than the Lib Dems did of the Brown millions …
Brown, I seem to recall, chucked money at us a couple of weeks before election day. So we ran off what was virtually a complete remake of our previous leaflet and shoved it at voters, to their total bemusement and ignoral. Stupid, third-rate, loser tactics. Of course Brown didn’t care, he probably didn’t even know there was an election on. Ashcroft, on the other hand, knows what he’s playing at. Did you see Cameron refusing to rule out giving Ashcroft a job?
Knowing what we do now about Brown, I find it difficult to believe his gift was prompted by altruism.