So now we see our own government looking for ways to stamp out tax competition or at least cut it down to size. If small countries with few natural resources — an island in the Irish Sea, perhaps, or in the Caribbean — hit upon new advantages and find a market for them, they must be bullied until they desist. The Isle of Man can go back to exporting kippers while the Caymans try their luck with sea salt.

Chancellors are always tempted to parade themselves as tax enforcers. Not a budget speech goes by without a crackdown on loopholes (the preferred phrase) written into it. This is accompanied by a display of tax incentives, which soon enough are enlarged into loopholes. Gordon Brown inherited this approach and took it farther. He made the tax system more complex, so that his Finance Acts grew thicker and thicker, and he got his hands on the machinery of tax collection.

There had for a long time been two different machines: two agencies of the Crown, with different traditions. The Inland Revenue was professional and legalistic. The Customs and Excise had been rough and ready smuggler-busters. When Brown as Chancellor chose to amalgamate them, the Customs were widely perceived to have come out on top. He then moved the merged agency into the Treasury's back office, where he could keep an eye on it. His instinct, as always, was for control.

Today's Prime Minister and Chancellor have found his legacy useful. Their style is to deflect blame on to convenient scapegoats. If the economy stutters, that must be the fault of those profligate bankers, now sitting on their cash-boxes and failing to lend. If the public finances are slow to improve, that must be the fault of all those who should be paying tax but aren't. So the taxmen must threaten middle-class tax avoiders — and as for big companies which could afford to pay more than they do, they must be blamed and named and shamed. The Treasury, no doubt, will have their details to hand.  

As for the tax havens, what better scapegoats could there be? They are distant and mysterious, and presumably up to no good. Not since Harold Wilson blamed the "Gnomes of Zurich" for speculating against the pound in the 1960s has anyone fitted the bill so perfectly. So let the advanced economies gang up on them, and let the British government be seen to lead the way. The trick is to suggest a moral imperative if a legal one cannot be found.