This morning’s newspapers were never going to make enjoyable reading for the Prime Minister following his admission yesterday that he owned shares in an offshore trust. But David Cameron may still not have been quite prepared for the focus with which the headlines go after him. He has experienced bad newspaper headlines before, of course, but this is the first time the attacks have focused so specifically on him, rather than on a policy introduced by the Government. It’s hard to feel sorry for Cameron, though. By dragging the story out with statements that raised more questions than they answered, he only has himself to blame for whipping this up into the media storm which we see on today’s front pages.
The Daily Mirror reflects on calls for David Cameron to step down following his tax confession. It’s not going to end that way, but the paper doesn’t miss the chance to lay into the PM:
‘PM: I did profit from tax haven’, says the Daily Mail, before going on to tell how David Cameron ‘finally admits links to his father’s Panama fund’. ‘The farce goes on’ strapline at the top of the page may have nothing to do with the PM’s statement, but many readers might not share the distinction.
The Daily Telegraph plays it straight with its headline: ‘I did have money offshore’. It also ties together the offshore tax issue with the Government’s £9m spend on pro-EU leaflets.
The Guardian focuses on the PM’s ‘four partial denials’ over the offshore account before he came clean yesterday:
The Daily Express lays into the Prime Minister – and also emphasises Cameron’s statements earlier this week that he had not profited from offshore trusts:
David Cameron manages to avoid much in the way of fury in The Sun, but the simplicity of its headline ‘Cam £31k tax haven’ is still damaging:
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