Tens of thousands of people on Saturday marched through London in protest against government spending cuts, with some protesters demanding British Prime Minister David Cameron’s resignation over his family’s offshore finances.
Demonstrators converged on Trafalgar Square, calling for more investment in the health service, housing, education and public sector pay, while some held up banners reading: “Ditch Dodgy Dave” and “Cameron Must Go — Tories Out!”
The protest, which also included demands to protect Britain’s troubled steel industry, was planned long before Cameron’s admission last week that he once held shares in his late father’s offshore investment fund.
Photo: Reuters
However, The People’s Assembly, which helped organize the trade union-backed march, said the revelations sparked by the so-called Panama Papers “prove that this is a government for the privileged few.”
Cameron took the unprecedented step of releasing a summary of his tax returns for the past six years, but a new poll published late on Saturday found 52 percent of voters believe he has not been “honest and open” about his finances.
Forty-four percent said his handling of his financial affairs was “morally repugnant,” according to the ComRes survey for the Independent and the Sunday Mirror newspapers.
“For somebody in that position, you have a duty of care to the people of the country to be very open, very transparent,” protester Sarah Henney said. “Just because something is legal, does not always make it right.”
British Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer John McDonnell of the opposition Labour Party was among a number of political figures who addressed the protesters, and he called for an end to the spending cuts introduced after the global financial crisis in 2008-2009.
“I think Cameron should go, but I think he should take his party with him. His government is now bankrupt in terms of political ideas and bankrupt in terms of what they have done with the economy as well,” McDonnell said.
Cameron, who was re-elected last year with a parliamentary majority, said he sold his shares in his late father’s offshore investment fund before taking office and denied the fund had been established to avoid tax.
However, the row has put the prime minister under pressure at a difficult time, as he seeks to manage an increasingly bitter fight within his Conservative Party over the upcoming referendum on EU membership.
With 128 of the 330 Conservative lawmakers in parliament and several of Cameron’s own ministers campaigning against him in favor of leaving the EU ahead of the June 23 vote, veteran Conservative member of parliament Ken Clarke said that if Cameron loses the referendum, he would be forced out of office.
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