Non dom status is for foreign domiciliaries and their children, they pay UK income tax and capital gains tax on UK sources of income and gains and on foreign income or gains to the extent that they are remitted to the UK (Ed Miliband lied about all this). George Osborne has been progressively hammering non doms, so in addition to this income and capital gains tax they also pay a “remittance based charge” dependent on how long they have resided here, of up to £90,000 a year.

The consensus of both parties until yesterday was that the arrangement works well for the UK. Having the super rich here paying some tax is better than having them in Monte Carlo paying no tax. So ending their status would cost Great Britain money. As Ed Balls makes very clear in this video:

There are about 116,000 non doms in the UK. The number doubled under Labour from 67,600 to 137,000 between 1997 and 2007. So it is incredibly hypocritical that Labour now want to act against them. Yet they have announced that they will get rid of the status and have made an appropriate poster.

 But, of course, this is a lie. As George Osborne was very happy to point out:

And here are the actual Labour proposals. Which, as you can see, are a fudge to keep non dom going, but with some changes.

So what is going on here? It looks like Labour’s election campaign took a huge blow yesterday when Blair gave a speech on Europe saying that the British people can’t be trusted with democracy and must do what he says. This, obviously, created a large and hostile anti-Labour reaction. So Labour tacticians suddenly responded with this non dom announcement, without thinking it through. They thought it would be popular because it follows their normal “hammer the rich” mantra and that it would bring back the support than Blair lost them.

However all that has happened is that it has revealed the usual Labour lies and hypocrisy. They tried to deny that the video above existed, then they said it had been unfavorably edited, and so on. Lie after lie. To add to the initial lie that they were getting rid of non dom and the lie that non doms pay no tax.

Labour really are the nasty party, as I proved in an earlier article. Today they have proved it again. Nobody of sound mind can surely vote for them.

One final irony is that non doms contribute many millions to the Labour party. Proof again that this was a rushed announcement. Here are some larger donations identified by the Sun newspaper:

• Lord Gulam Noon £882,326.
• Lakshmi Mittal £5.1 million.
• Sir Christopher Ondaatje £1.7 million.
• Mahmoud Khayami £835,000.
• William Bollinger £510,000 .