Almost four years ago I wrote The Gospel According to Dave, in which I mocked Cameron’s sanctimonious pronouncements on tax avoidance:
“And Dave opened his mouth and taught them, saying, Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit tax evasion: But I say unto you that whosoever committeth avoidance hath committed evasion already in his heart; his is hell fire.”
This became a recurrent theme in Dave’s orations. Yes, tax evasion is illegal, while tax avoidance isn’t. But let’s not be sticklers for casuistry. At issue here is morality, not legal technicalities.
Now, when chaps who’d prostitute their underage daughters for better poll ratings start talking morality, warning bells should sound.
For it’s not the government’s job to preach morality. Its job is to protect the realm and uphold its constitutional principles. Whenever government officials start mouthing moral platitudes, we can be certain they’re remiss in their legitimate duties.
According to their gospel truths, our money isn’t really ours. By right it belongs to the state – even if the state can’t yet claim it all because of property rights and other archaic iniquities built into the law.
People get angry when deprived of their rightful property, and our spivs are no exception. Yes, the state extorts half of what the middle classes earn. But it’s the other half that’s so irksome to the spivs that they can’t contain their rage.
They sputter spittle whenever some money bypasses their coffers, ending up in the pockets of those who actually earn it. Offshore tax shelters stick in the craw, irrespective of their legality. Parents’ money gifts to children, ditto: there’s a chance the youngsters will thereby pay less inheritance tax.
It never occurs to the spivs, or to the people brainwashed by them, to question the morality of the inheritance tax in the first place. After all, the money bequeathed has already been taxed every which way. It’s unjust to tax it again, but justice doesn’t come into it.
That family money should stay in the family is a bugbear of socialists, regardless of what they call themselves. As far as they’re concerned, the state should confiscate all the money the deceased made during a lifetime of toil, and if that impoverishes his family, not to worry. The state will step in and look after the newly indigent, thereby gaining control over them.
The 40 per cent inheritance tax is a step in that direction. Hence the gift loophole is seen as a backward step on the road to the bright socialist future.
I like the gift rule. When an ageing British parent gives some money to a child, the gift only becomes tax-free if the parent lives another seven years. Hence this loophole indirectly fosters the good side of human nature: it stops greedy children from hoping the parent will die soon.
In general, it’s the moral duty of every person to avoid giving money to the state as much as legally possible. After all, most of the tax revenue will be wasted or, worse still, used for nefarious purposes, such as corrupting society by creating a vast class of dependent freeloaders, many of them coming from hostile cultures.
Hence Dave’s sermons are mendacious. Now it turns out they’re also hypocritical.
For Dave’s father had an offshore fund, from which Dave profited to the tune of £30,000. Cameron père also gave the apple of his eye £300,000 as a gift, and Mrs Cameron aggravated matters by giving him another £200,000.
Now, these amounts are trivial compared to those earned by Russian cellists or indeed to the value of just about any London flat, never mind a house, bequeathed to the grateful offspring. But numbers don’t affect the principle, and Dave seems to be saying to his flock “Don’t do as I do, do as I say”.
What has followed is clamour for Dave’s resignation as a minimum. As a maximum, Ken Livingston, the hard-left thug whose links with the Soviet Union were never properly investigated, has called for Dave to be imprisoned.
Ken forgets that Britain is still different from the socialist paradise of his dreams in that one has to break the law to be sent down, and Dave hasn’t done that.
I’m sympathetic to the idea of the likes of Dave being kicked out of government, but not for this non-reason. And I do think he belongs in jail, for his treasonous efforts to undermine Britain’s constitution by dissolving her sovereignty. But this a different matter.
Any honest man would state publicly that he has done nothing illegal, meaning that his financial affairs are none of anyone else’s business. Either produce evidence of illegality or shut up, would be the message.
But, forgetting that he lives in a glass house, Dave has been throwing stones for the last four years at least. Now he has had to go through the pathetically humiliating and grovelling exercise of revealing his tax returns for public scrutiny.
This has intensified the class war in which there’s never any truce. To our public, corrupted by socialist propaganda, being wealthy is borderline criminal in itself. One wishes this were the only crime our spivs commit.