WHY CAMERON’S TAX CRISIS MAKES BREXIT MORE LIKELY
DAVID CAMERON was meant to be the greatest asset of the pro-EU cause in the run- up to June’s referendum. But now, as his premiership is engulfed by turmoil over his financial affairs, he is fast becoming the campaign’s biggest liability. The flagship of the Remain fleet, instead of firing on the Brexit enemy, has been hit below the waterline.
There is no sign of any let- up in the furore, which was sparked by the revelation last week of his investment in a Panamanian offshore trust owned by his father. It is a measure of the controversy’s seriousness that Cameron has now been forced into the humiliating step of publishing his recent income tax returns, an unprecedented move for a British prime minister.
Yet this new material has only added more fuel to the flames of the combustible row. Further questions are now being asked about cash gifts from his mother, the size of his wife’s earnings and the extent of his other assets.
So low has the Prime Minister sunk that last week his ratings even fell below those of Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn, an unreconstructed socialist radical who has spent his entire political career in the wasteland of the far Left.
This dramatic collapse in Cameron’s popularity will cause real damage to the pro-EU campaign, given his key role at its front. The entire pro- EU strategy has been his, from his first call for a referendum in 2013 to his botched deal with Brussels this year.
NO OTHER senior politician is in a position to lead Remain. Corbyn is not only a socialist extremist but also has a long past record of opposition to Euro federalism, which renders his current pro- EU stance profoundly unconvincing.
Similarly, the Lib Dems are irrelevant, while Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP is too toxic for English voters.
The outcome of the referendum, therefore, is bound to be influenced by Cameron’s popularity. What undermines him also hurts the EU cause. As one Labour MP admitted in the wake of the tax controversy, “For those of us who want to stay in the EU and are relying on Cameron to carry the torch, it could be completely bloody fatal.”
Cameron’s supporters argue that all this is deeply unfair, partly because the EU vote should have nothing to do with his finances and partly because the Prime Minister has paid all the necessary taxes on his income. But such pleading ignores political realities.
The fact is that this controversy feeds perfectly into the anti- establishment, Brexit narrative that we are governed by a privileged elite that has no connection to the mainstream public.
Indifferent to national interests, these elitists adore globalisation because it enables them to transfer their money easily round the world while trumpeting their devotion to openness, just as they embrace mass immigration because it allows them to exploit cheap, imported labour while parading their moral superiority about cultural diversity.
But it is the ordinary British people who pay the price for these policies with lower wages and lost jobs. Indeed a chasm has opened between the voters and ruling European political class. One Tory minister, referring to the Prime Minister’s investment in his father’s offshore trust, said that Cameron “doesn’t think that £ 30,000 is a lot of money”.
There is also a strong whiff of hypocrisy about this business. For the past six years Cameron and his Government have given stern lectures about the iniquities of tax avoidance and tax havens. Yet according to the Panama papers, his family have benefited significantly from such arrangements, something which rather weakens the impact of his moral strictures.
The same double standards can be seen at an institutional level. Extraordinarily, despite all the criticism of tax havens by the Tory Government it turns out that over the past six years British taxpayers have been forced to dish out no less than £ 253million in foreign aid to these places. Even Panama has benefited from this largesse, by £ 1.5million.
THE tax furore has badly dented Cameron’s authority and that has far- reaching implications for the referendum. Much of the Remain campaign is based on an appeal to trust the Prime Minister, yet that trust is collapsing. From now on his alarmist warnings about Brexit will carry little weight. His propaganda initiatives, like the recent £ 9million pro- EU leaflet drop to every household, will be increasingly derided.
Cameron admitted on Saturday that it had been “a bad week” for him but it has been an even worse one for the Remain camp amid continuing exposure of the EU’s hopelessly dysfunctional nature.
The Eurozone remains sluggish, with the German economic minister Sigmar Gabriel admitting that the EU has made people poorer. The migration meltdown continues with tens of thousands of Africans arriving in Italy.
Here in Britain, we learned that the number of European criminals in British prisons increased by an incredible 240 per cent between 2002 and 2014. Meanwhile last Tuesday the Dutch people voted overwhelmingly against the policy of Brussels towards Ukraine, another indicator of the EU’s lack of democratic legitimacy.
The mood of the country seems to be turning. One anxious commentator on a Left- wing newspaper shrieked on Saturday that “a perfect storm is brewing and it could take Britain out of the Europe”. Cameron’s self- inflicted wounds will only help the process of regaining our freedom.
‘ There’s no sign of any let- up in the furore’