When the Conservatives were trying to make hay out of the whole 'Gordon Brown is a bully' hoo-haa the one thing that left David Cameron speechless during prime minister's questions was a well timed reference by Brown to their 'offshore funding' in an obvious reference to the Belize based Lord Ashcroft. Or should that be British based? Who knows? 

If they could have conjured up a credible defence you can bet your tax return that Cameron would have been shouting it from the rooftops and certainly at the aforementioned PMQ’s. He definitely wouldn’t be making vague statements about the matter being resolved and flogging dead horses. 

If only Jacob Zuma hadn’t chosen this week to make his first state visit to London, which meant all three party leaders missed the weekly ruck, some questions that couldn’t be dodged could have been asked while the iron is hot.

Of course, Labour and the Liberal Democrats quite happily accept much needed money from “non-dom” tycoons as well. The holier than thou attitude that followed Lord Ashcroft’s admission of the loopholes that reportedly saved him, according to Liberal Democrat MP Chris Huhne, a massive £127 million in taxes, doesn’t exactly ring true. Games will be played. 

Despite the obvious double standards, the Lord Ashcroft case is still unique. His ability to affect this election with his vast resources is very serious and real. Furthermore, the other parties haven’t been deliberately ambiguous and, to use the term used by the Information Commissioner about the situation, ‘obfuscatory’ about it. Note those last four letters. 

Whenever the hyperbole regularly spouted by politicians actually rings true, something is very wrong. Alan Johnson scored some easy political points by pointing out that Ashcroft isn’t exactly being patriotic – the day after Cameron made all that noise about it being his patriotic duty to beat Brown and mend ‘broken Britain.’ If Ashcroft paid more tax in the UK that would surely go ( an admittedly very small) way towards helping reduce the deficit that the Conservatives are so keen to diminish above all else - at the expense of the public services that are rarely used by the very rich. Chris Huhne’s assertion that the Conservative Party had been “bought like a banana republic” is perhaps a little bit insensitive, a little tactless. But that doesn’t make it any less true. 

Why has Cameron not been as swiftly ruthless with Lord Ashcroft as he has been with anyone else who threatened his march towards government or was, even slightly, off message? He can’t do it now so close to the election. That he has put himself in this position is staggering. If they had come clean when questions were first asked this would have been nipped in the bud. Instead, when shadow Commons leader Sir George Young described Lord Ashcroft as a “non-dom” a few months ago, the spin doctors said he had “mis-spoken.”

They might disappoint photographers by banning champagne from their party conferences, but the more things change…