Can’t say I am shocked.

But maybe I am mildly surprised that after the furore over “cash for peerages” the Party leaders have given two fingers to the rest of us by rewarding their financial backers with seats in the House of Lords.

The Times tells us that Ed Miliband to his credit vetoed Broon’s list of donors, leaving Nigel Doughty, Sir Ronald Cohen and Jon Mendelsohn (Labour’s fundraiser) allegedly fuming on the side-lines.

I note Sir Gulam Noon gets a peerage.

As I read all this, my memories of the Michael Ashcroft saga come flooding back, like a bad dream.

Ashcroft cheated his way into the House of Lords in 2000.

He gave a “solemn and binding” undertaking that he would take up permanent residence in the UK before the end of 2000 and that he would not take his seat in the Lords until that happened.

The record shows m’lud that the Political Honours Scrutiny Committee was clear in its own mind that the “permanent residence” promised by Ashcroft involved UK domicile which, in turn, meant liability for UK tax on his worldwide income.

Poor old Sir Hayden Phillips, the credulous mandarin responsible for dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s, was completely taken in. It was all too complicated for him and, in any event, he wasn’t a tax expert. The sketch writers had a field day.

We now know that Ashcroft kept his non-dom status secret until it was forced out of him in March this year.

For a decade, Ashcroft wasn’t paying UK tax on his worldwide income which was a condition of getting the peerage he craved.

Here is the evidence for those with the stamina to go through it.

The Public Administration Select Committee had Sir Hayden Phillips and Baroness Dean (a member of the Political Honours Scrutiny Committee at the time in question) in front of it on 18 March 2010 and the session was broadcast in the usual way.

(Ashcroft and William Hague were invited but declined to attend.)

But the written evidence - handed over by the Cabinet Office at the Committee’s formal request - was not put into the public domain by the Parliamentary authorities until the day after the General Election, 7 May 2010.

It is here to be consulted by the curious.

Would Ashcroft still have got his peerage if he had said in 2000 that he had no intention of giving up his non-dom status until 2010?

I doubt it.

Lord Ashcroft got away with it.

Tragic but true.