The Prime Minister’s admission yesterday evening that he had held shares in his father’s Panama-registered fund, Blairmore, is without question a big deal. And, because of Number 10’s poor media management since the so-called ‘Panama Papers’ emerged on Sunday night, it is an even bigger deal than it otherwise might have been.
Rather than having his spokesperson initially insist his financial arrangements are a ‘private matter’, the Prime Minister should have said early on Monday what he said last night: that he held shares in his father’s offshore fund until 2010, paying full income tax on the dividends, and then sold them. Instead, the quintet of statements, each one just a little less opaque than the last, made the Prime Minister look not only like he had something to hide, but that he felt entitled to hide it too.
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