Has David Cameron finally weathered the Panama Papers’ storm? Tuesday’s national press coverage of his Commons performance suggests that, for the moment, he may well have drawn a line under the affair.
The rightwing newspapers were generally supportive of the fact that he has published his tax returns, that he defended wealth creation and that he thinks it fine for one generation to pass on its riches to the next.
So the Daily Telegraph headlined the prime minister’s statement: “Cameron: wealth is not a dirty word” and the Daily Express was delighted to report “PM backs your right to pass on wealth”.
The Daily Mail chose a more personal angle: “Don’t smear my father, says angry Cameron”. Even the Guardian conceded that the PM had “come out fighting”.
Three other papers preferred to headline the decision of chancellor George Osborne to publish his tax returns. He had bowed to pressure to reveal his earnings” said the i, while the Times reported that Osborne had enjoyed £45,000 from his family’s firm “even though it has not paid corporation tax in seven years”.
The Daily Mirror, which has lately been echoing its former Tory-bashing history, ran a front page headlined: “Chancer of the Exchequer... how dodgy Osborne made £2,500 from his own tax cuts”.
Oddly, the non-political Metro thought the major story concerned Jeremy Corbyn’s fine for failing, by a couple of days, to file his tax return on time, calling him “Corbyn the tax bodger”.
Some leading articles reflected a concern about where the publishing of tax returns by politicians might lead. It would, said the Telegraph, “deter able people who have made money from embarking on a career in a parliament overpopulated with political activists who have achieved nothing.”
The row has enabled Labour to “reprise its ‘one law for the rich, another for the poor’ accusation to which a government headed by several wealthy individuals is especially vulnerable.”
But the Telegraph noted that the publication of tax returns had revealed that Cameron and Osborne had “each paid nearly four times more than the Labour leader towards the upkeep of the nation.”
It was critical of the “pernicious narrative” that accumulating wealth is a bad thing and concluded:
“Tax cuts create incentives to wealth creation, fuel aspiration and stimulate people to work harder, thereby generating income and extra revenues. Mr Cameron was right to emphasise these virtues in the Commons yesterday, and not before time.”
The Mail agreed: “It was high time he took this soundly conservative stand.” Cameron “has to demonstrate, on every possible occasion, that the government is on the side of the many millions of people who for the sake of their own families are determined to work hard and create wealth”.
The Guardian, conceding that “Cameron carried the day among MPs”, argued that “the long-term residue” of the row “will be both toxic and defining for the prime minister, his party and his government.” It continued:
“The two burning issues exposed by the Panama Papers are the enormity of the world’s lightly taxed or untaxed offshore financial holdings and the stark inequality between a system in which the richest pay so little tax when compared with the strictly enforced rules that govern the honest ordinary majority.
To allow the surge of righteous anger about the offshore world and culture to be hijacked by another campaign directed against the political class would be a distraction at a point when the much bigger issues about unfairness are on fire.”
Cameron will find it hard “to shake off the sense that he embodies a privileged class who benefit most from offshore tax regimes. Dennis Skinner may have been suspended for saying them, but the words that may linger longest from Monday are his taunt of ‘dodgy Dave.’”
The Mirror also thought Skinner “was bang on the money by calling Cameron ‘Dodgy Dave’. Yet this most honest of MPs was kicked out of the Commons for telling the truth.”
The Sun preferred to concentrate its fire on Labour. With polls showing most voters hate the “death tax” and the government struggling to make its case Labour “let the PM off the hook.”
Sketch writers welcome the Beast’s intervention
For parliamentary sketch writers, Skinner’s jibe at Cameron and the intervention by Tory MP Alan Duncan offered unrivalled material.
“It is some achievement to be kicked out of class by Sir on the first day back after the hols,” wrote the Times’s Patrick Kidd of Skinner’s ejection from the Commons by the Speaker, John Bercow. He continued:
“The silly thing is that Mr Skinner had been asking a valid question. He wanted to know about the windfalls that the prime minister had received on his taxpayer-subsidised homes. As a result of his puerile strop, the question was left unanswered.”
Kidd argued that Duncan “wound up the Labour benches by accusing them of ‘synthetic indignation’ for wanting to know every footnote of the PM’s financial affairs... He told Mr Cameron to fend off the forces of envy, lest the Commons be ‘stuffed full of low achievers.’”
The Telegraph’s Michael Deacon echoed Kidd in contending that Skinner’s refusal to “withdraw his pointless insult” meant that Cameron could avoid answering his pertinent question about the prime minister’s mortgage payments.
But “silliest of all” was Duncan’s low achievers’ remark. “Hmm,” wrote Deacon, “I think you’re supposed to call them ‘hard-working people’, Sir Alan.”
Quentin Letts, in the Mail, thought Duncan’s low achievers remark “shot up the Labour lot’s backsides like a vindaloo steam jet.”
The Guardian’s John Crace wrote of Duncan being “a man possessed of a large fortune but little intelligence” and wondered whether Cameron would be happy about his colleague “calling the proles a bunch of useless, workshy failures” when the Tory party is trying to lose its nasty tag.
As for Skinner, when ordered from the chamber, he “wandered off happily, muttering ‘Dodgy Dave’ over and over again to himself. Mission accomplished.”
