Not content with making one stunningly hypocritical statement, Cameron then made another only days later when he decided to criticise the leadership at Barclays bank in the wake of their £290 million fine for rigging (Libor & Euribor) interest rates that effect millions of people and £trillions worth of transactions. Cameron attempted to take the moral high ground, claiming that "people have to take responsibility for the actions and show how they're going to be accountable for these actions," and that "it is very important that goes all the way to the top of the organisation". Noble sentiments indeed until you consider some of the numerous Tory corruption scandals under David Cameron's leadership.
Take the News International phone hacking scandal, has the man that maintained stunningly inappropriate relationships with high profile members of the Murdoch press empire and hired the liar Andy Coulson as his right hand man, taken "responsibility" for his actions? Of course he hasn't.
Take the Liam Fox, Adam Werrity, Atlantic Bridge corruption scandal. Did Cameron take responsibility for allowing such blatantly corrupt activity to go on under his watch? Of course he didn't. He actually attempted to shield Liam Fox to such an extent that he even breached the ministerial code in order to avoid a politically damaging independent investigation into the corruption scandal.
Take the Westminster expenses scandal, didn't the fact that dozens of Tory MPs were brazenly stealing from the taxpayer demand that accountability should have gone "all the way to the top of the organisation"? Did Cameron "take responsibility" for the corruption and theft that his MPs were engaged in? Of course he didn't. In fact under his watch many of the worst offenders got off scott free. Several Tory second-home flippers such as Michael Gove and William Hague are sitting in David Cameron's cabinet. This shows that under David Cameron's leadership, accountability not only doesn't apply to "the top of the organisation" it doesn't even apply to those that committed the offences.
Take the absurd case of Jeremy Hunt, the man who was parachuted in by Cameron to deal with the Rupert Murdoch's bid to take complete control of Sky because his predecessor Vince Cable was criticised as "too biased". Hunt was quite clearly Murdoch's pick as their inside guy, crucially sending a memo to David Cameron in support of the BSkyB bid weeks before Cameron had even appointed him as the minister responsible for determining the outcome. How on Earth Hunt did not consider this blatant bias a conflict of interests and recuse himself is a mystery, especially since his predecessor had been removed because of accusations of bias. Perhaps in Cameron's and Hunt's minds Cable was simply guilty of "the wrong kind of bias". Given all of the evidence of his cosy relationship with the Murdoch press, has Hunt been made to resign and somebody at "the top" of the Tory party taken responsibility for having made such a transparently biased appointment? Of course they haven't.
Take the blatant mismanagement of the economy by George Osborne and his numerous shambolic U-turns after his "back of an envelope" millionaires budget, has Cameron forced his Bullingdon Club buddy to take responsibility and resign for having driven the UK economy back into recession with his "cut now, think later" austerity fetishism? Of course he hasn't.
It is quite astonishing to such brazenly hypocritical pontification from a man that has wriggled and connived to avoid responsibility for the corruption and incompetence of his party, a man that has done everything in his power to protect his MPs and supporters from the consequences of their corruption and incompetence too. By contrasting his statements on the immorality of tax-dodging and the need for responsibility to be taken at the top of an organisation, with his actions when it comes to these matters, we can see that Cameron clearly believes that there is one set of flexible and morally ambiguous rules for Tories and their supporters and a completely different set of clearly defined and morally rigorous rules for everyone else. A clear double-standard that is the classic sign of self-interested hypocrisy.
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