People in glass houses…

Stories about members of the establishment using offshore tax shelters — ooh er missus! — come along about once a year, thanks to the efforts of the liberal media. Cue a chorus of disapproval from Jeremy Corbyn, Vince Cable, Margaret Hodge and other left-wing panjandrums who demand that the government ‘seize’ Britain’s overseas territories and ‘clamp down’ on tax loopholes. Then, as night follows day, it emerges on the Guido Fawkes website that a large number of these sanctimonious prigs are themselves direct beneficiaries of offshore tax arrangements — and the kerfuffle over the Paradise Papers is no different, as I will shortly make clear. It’s like an annual festival of hypocrisy.

The Guardian has been leading the charge this week, as it always does, conveniently ignoring the fact that the Scott Trust, which owns the paper, was originally set up by the Scott family to avoid paying death duties, as well as the fact that the Guardian Media Group took advantage of a murky web of tax shelters in the Caymans to avoid paying a penny on the £300 million it earned from the sale of Auto Trader in 2008.