'The row over Lord Ashcroft's donations to the Tory party threatened to erupt into a full-blown constitutional crisis last night as questions were raised over whether
the Queen and the former prime minister,
Tony Blair, had granted him a peerage under false pretences.
As David Cameron's aides confirmed that Ashcroft would be retiring as Tory deputy chairman after the election, the Liberal Democrats called on the cabinet secretary, Sir Gus O'Donnell, to publish all documents relating to the peerage as a matter of urgency, so that it could be established whether the sovereign had been misled.
In a letter to O'Donnell, the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, Lord Oakeshott, said that, given the "overwhelming public interest" in how the Tories' biggest donor came to be elevated to the Lords, it was vital "to establish whether the Queen conferred a life peerage… under false pretences".
The monarch confers honours mostly on the advice of the Cabinet Office and the prime minister. Ashcroft's declaration last week that he was a "non-dom" has been seen to contradict "clear and unequivocal" assurances given to the then Tory leader, William Hague, that he would take up permanent residence in the UK before the end of 2000. This assurance was seen as crucial. Members of Blair's inner circle suggest the former prime minister now feels he has been misled.
"Hague told Tony that Ashcroft would pay huge amounts of tax," said a source. "That was the deal. That was what we all understood at the time.'
Queen and Tony Blair dragged into Michael Ashcroft peerage row | Politics | The Observer