Michael Anthony Ashcroft, Baron Ashcroft, (born 4 March 1946) is a British-Belizean businessman, pollster and politician. He is a former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party. Ashcroft founded Michael A. Ashcroft Associates in 1972 and is the 132nd richest person in the UK, as ranked by the Sunday Times Rich List 2021, with an estimated fortune of £1.257 billion. He sat on the Conservative benches of the House of Lords until 2015, having been created a life peer in 2000. His peerage was controversial due to his status as a tax exile. The Cabinet Office stated that he would take up permanent residence in the UK for tax purposes, but it was reported a decade later that he had not done so. Ashcroft holds dual British and Belizean nationality, and is a belonger of the Turks and Caicos Islands. Early life and education Michael Anthony Ashcroft was born in Chichester, West Sussex. His father Eric was a British colonial civil servant; Ashcroft spent some of his early years in British Honduras (now Belize) and Malawi. He was educated at Norwich School, Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe, and Mid-Essex Technical College (now Anglia Ruskin University), where he obtained a Higher National Diploma in Business studies. Business career After a period in Belize after completing his education, Ashcroft returned to hitch hike around Europe, and then for a short period of time became the manager of a rock and roll band. In 1967, Ashcroft joined Carreras Tobacco as a management trainee. He left Carreras in 1969, joining Pritchard Services Group, a cleaning and business services company, after several months unemployed. In 1972, at the age of 26, he started his own business, Michael A. Ashcroft Associates, which he would use to launch several profitable acquisitions. Acquisitions and divestments Ashcroft's first acquisition was Uni-Kleen – a loss-making cleaning company with 1,000 employees, which he purchased for just £1 in 1974, with a £15,000 bank loan (). He worked to turn the company around, selling it just three years later for £1.3 million. On exiting Uni-Kleen in 1977, his next purchase was Hawley Goodall, another poorly performing company, this time in camping equipment manufacture. Ashcroft used Hawley to make a series of acquisitions, transforming the company into a business services group, ranging from janitorial services for hospitals and offices, to car auction services, and later with a focus on the security services industry. Through