{"id":626,"date":"2016-04-11T12:24:00","date_gmt":"2016-04-11T11:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/?p=626"},"modified":"2021-06-15T15:43:36","modified_gmt":"2021-06-15T14:43:36","slug":"perhaps-we-were-not-all-in-it-together-but-david-cameron-is-really-in-it-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/perhaps-we-were-not-all-in-it-together-but-david-cameron-is-really-in-it-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Perhaps we were not \u201call in it together\u201d, but David Cameron is really in it now!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr David Bates, Director of Politics and International Relations, comments on the Panama Papers and whether they have affected David Cameron’s credibility as Prime Minister.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Since becoming Prime Minister in 2010, David Cameron has spoken a great deal about the need to close \u2018tax loopholes\u2019. At a Downing Street meeting in 2013, the Prime Minister said:<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s be clear about why this tax issue matters. I mean, if companies don\u2019t properly pay their taxes, and individuals don\u2019t properly pay their taxes, we all suffer as a result. So it\u2019s important we do get our own house in order.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A tougher policy on tax evasion was supposedly the partner policy to the cuts in benefits. Yet the perception must be that the government is not as enthusiastic about this as it is about removing tax credits and throwing long-standing tenants out of their social housing because they have too many bedrooms.<\/p>\n

Mr Cameron has now moved to publish his tax returns, at least those since 2010. It looks as though the Chancellor George Osborne will do the same. Perhaps they should go even further. For a Prime Minister and his Chancellor, tax cannot be a private matter. It ought not to be so for MPs either. Let\u2019s scrutinise all their tax returns. Let\u2019s look not only at if they evaded tax, but also at whether they attempted to avoid making a fair contribution to financing public goods.<\/p>\n

It was only on Tuesday last week that the Prime Minister of Iceland, Sigmundur Dav\u00ed\u00f0 Gunnlaugsson, was forced to resign as a result of widespread public protest and the threat of a no-confidence vote by the Icelandic Parliament. The revolt was initiated by the Pirate Party, a rising force in Icelandic politics. As with David Cameron, this crisis resulted from information in the Panama Papers. Edward Snowden has stated that it will be \u2018up to the British people\u2019 if David Cameron is forced to do the same thing. I doubt our parliament will be as efficacious as the Icelandic one. But perhaps \u2018people power\u2019 in Britain will follow the example of Iceland\u2019s courageous citizens.<\/p>\n

*An extended version of this\u00a0piece can be found on the Politics and International Relations blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr David Bates, Director of Politics and International Relations, comments on the Panama Papers and whether they have affected David Cameron’s credibility as Prime Minister.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":246,"featured_media":629,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,3902],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-research"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"authorName":"holly finch","featuredImage":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/437\/2016\/04\/Number-10.jpg","postExcerpt":"Dr David Bates, Director of Politics and International Relations, comments on the Panama Papers and whether they have affected David Cameron's credibility as Prime Minister.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/246"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7373,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626\/revisions\/7373"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}