Non-dom donors just don't make sense

The Ashcroft affair is focused – rightly – on the undertakings that the billionaire businessman made, and appears to have failed to honour, when he accepted a peerage 10 years ago. This is a much more serious matter than Ashcroft's non-dom status, which all parties are keen to emphasise is not illegal. Yet non-domiciled political donors are a strange breed, are they not? One can understand – just about – the kind of self-justification a Conservative might make, for tax avoidance at least chimes with ideas of small states, low taxation, entrepreneurial freedom and so on. But what goes on in the mind of a Labour-supporting non-dom? Avoiding tax so that you can spend it on bankrolling a party that heavily favours tax and spend? It's like holding up banks to get some cash to spread the word that holding up banks is wrong.