Cameron’s handling of the tax row means it won’t go away any time soon

David Cameron will give a statement in the Commons addressing the row about his tax arrangements, with George Osborne expected to publish his own tax return in the coming days too. That the Prime Minister has had to prepare a statement for MPs so that he can avoid being hauled to the Commons by Labour with an urgent question shows both how serious this row is for Cameron, but also how he is trying to compensate for being unprepared last week.

He had clearly underestimated how potent the revelations in the Panama Papers would be, thinking that they could be dismissed with a mere line about this being a ‘private matter’. The bitty statements and changes of tack that came over the following days shows that no-one in Downing Street really thought Cameron was in any danger.