Almost forgot to do the numbers for the short month of February: 1,576,691 page views from 914,466 visits by 166,205 visitors plus an additional 890,571 views via feed readers.  So a total just short of two and half million page views…

Lord Paul put up one fifth of the money for Gordon’s leadership campaign – such as it was. Will he be giving up his seat in the Lords or his non-domicile?  And Ronnie Cohen, PFI profiteer and non-domiciled donor? Is his money still welcome to the Labour Party?

Finally:

1st March 2010

A Statement From Lord Ashcroft

I am making this statement in advance of the release by the Cabinet Office of limited information about the award of my peerage and of the undertakings I gave at the time.

While I value my privacy, I do not want my affairs to distract from the general election campaign. I have therefore decided to release a copy of the letter which I wrote to William Hague, and to expand on what actually happened.

As the letter shows, the undertakings I gave were confirmed in a memorandum to William Hague dated 23rd March 2000. These were to “take up permanent residence in the UK again” by the end of that year. The other commitment in the memorandum was to resign as Belize’s permanent representative to the UN, which I did a week later.
In subsequent dialogue with the Government, it was officially confirmed that the interpretation in the first undertaking of the words “permanent residence” was to be that of “a long term resident” of the UK. I agreed to this and finally took up my seat in the House of Lords in October 2000. Throughout the last ten years, I have been declaring all my UK income to HM Revenue.

My precise tax status therefore is that of a “non-dom”. Two of Labour’s biggest donors – Lord Paul (recently made a privy councillor by the Prime Minister) and Sir Ronald Cohen, both long-term residents of the UK, are also “non-doms”.

As for the future, while the non-dom status will continue for many people in business or public life, David Cameron has said that anyone sitting in the legislature – Lords or Commons – must be treated as resident and domiciled in the UK for tax purposes. I agree with this change and expect to be sitting in the House of Lords for many years to come.

Ashcroft has forgotten about Lakshmi Mittal, another non-dom who, like Sir Ronnie (pictured) and Lord Paul, is inclined to bung Labour a couple of million when the feeling takes him.  Guido has argued that Ashcroft should come clean for years…

See : Ashcroft Should Just Come Clean, Ashcroft Should Come Clean

Via ConservativeHome

The pound has just fallen through the psychologically important €0.90 cents to the pound level, if it were not Greece we would now have £/€ parity.  It is sinking against the dollar as well. Think what a hung parliament and the inevitable political paralysis would mean for deficit reduction.  Markets would go into a tailspin, the cost of borrowing would rise. We would be looking at a Greek tragedy…

UPDATE : Gilt market has opened down as well.   The market has already removed the Triple-A rating on UK government debt.

Melanie Phillips writes…

“So this is what the Conservative party has really come to: defining responsibility and ‘doing the right thing’ as not marrying the girl whom a young man gets pregnant but merely moving in with her in order that she can continue to live on benefit.”