Alastair Campbell once said that if a story about you is still on the front page after a week you're in trouble. David Cameron is in trouble then. The story about his father's Panama investment fund rumbles on.
Cameron has handled this badly. First the stonewalling, then the partial revelation, then the more complete divulgence, then the tax return. The method doesn't look good, and it encourages journalists to think about what another layer off the onion might look like.
To be clear, I hold no brief for Cameron. He is a managerial centre-right type, capable, privileged, although not on the whole an ideologue. He has, I think, royally messed up the chance to extract concessions from Europe which would have enabled undecided voters like me to opt to stay In with a clear conscience. But when I look at the furore surrounding the leaked papers of Mossack Fonseca, I see only the malice, stupidity, confusion, opportunism and hypocrisy of his opponents.
You can cut to the chase quite simply by asking, "What did Cameron do wrong exactly?"
"Ah", comes the reply, "he invested money in an offshore fund".
"That's legal", you counter.
"That doesn't make it right".
"So why is it wrong then?"
"It's wrong because it's a way of avoiding tax".
"Putting money in an ISA is avoiding tax. So is investing in a pension. Why is using an offshore fund morally different?"
At that point the conversation tends to peter out, or relocate to the idea that David Cameron is a rich Tory bastard, as if that, even if true, were the clincher.
It's worth pointing out that the Cameron will have paid UK tax on the dividends that his investment paid each year, and would have paid capital gains tax when he sold it in 2010 on the gain the investment accrued if that had been big enough (it wasn't). The purpose of offshoring the fund seems to have been that the lower tax rates payable in Panama enabled the fund to grow more quickly, giving investors higher rates of return. If the fund had been domiciled in the UK it would have paid more UK tax on the growth but the Government would have received less from individual investors (whose dividends would have been lower).
That people don't understand this is not Cameron's fault. That Cameron's opponents choose not to is understandable, if not exactly the "new kind of politics" that Jeremy Corbyn promised. That the media flog the story to keep it running is also understandable, though forgivable only if one takes as read the cynicism with which the vast majority of journalists ply their trade. That the Guardian in particular should have pursued Cameron with the zeal of a Witchfinder General is downright hypocrisy when you consider the offshore company acquisition deals which the paper used in the sale of EMAP publishing group in 2008. No wonder I stopped buying it.
Unlike his pursuers in the media, David Cameron was elected by people who almost without exception will have known that he was a toff and came from a moneyed family. Since those are qualities which on the whole don't enamor an individual to the rest of us who don't share them, I think we can assume that most people don't care, and will conclude that Dave's persecutors belong to the ranks of the ignorant and spiteful.
PS The publication of Cameron's accounts reveal how badly the PM is paid relative to most professional people of similar stature. Cameron gets £100k or so. This compares badly to most consultants and barristers of a similar age, never mind what they get in the City of London for snorting coke off a hooker's embonpoint. Bright and ambitious people (and yes, politicians need to be personally ambitious) are not going to go into politics for £150k. The Director of the Royal Opera House was getting nearly £700k last time I looked (quite a lot of it from public funds, incredibly). Which job do we think is more demanding? I think I know the answer. And now the press and the opposition want our leaders to publish their accounts? Jesus wept. I'd have resigned already. Chapeau to Cameron just for hanging on in there.
