Ant And Dec’s Tax Avoidance Takeaway

The Super Soaraway Currant Bun made hay today in its continuing campaign of demonisation aimed at Mil The Younger, deploying its secret electoral weapon, or rather, weapons. Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly are the Sun’s latest ringing endorsement of Not Wanting Anyone To Vote Labour At All, and so important is their view that it has been splashed across the front page.

On top of that, just to keep the Murdoch boot on the Miliband windpipe, the spectre of Miliband as a character from Wallace and Gromit has been exhumed, to suggest that this is what might confront Brenda in Downing Street after the General Election, although, as any fule kno, the new Prime Minister pops round to her place, not the other way round. However, and here we encounter a significantly sized however, one fact is missing.

But first, on with the Sun splash: behind the front page, with its “RED ED ANT & DECKED” (geddit?!?), there is a supporting editorial telling “WE doubt And and Dec ever swayed anyone’s General Election vote. But [and this is a big but] their condemnation of Labour is interesting because it is in tune with much of Britain … some 67 per cent of voters cannot see Ed Miliband as Prime Minister” [this is not “condemnation”].

There’s more: “Before long, those who tell polling companies they’ll vote Labour but don’t fancy Miliband in No 10 will realise they can’t have it both ways … We suspect their dislike of the leader will be the clincher” [which is why the Sun is running a daily campaign of character assassination]. Mil The Elder is duly mentioned, but not the fact that he had more than one chance to catch the Top Party Job, but dropped it.

Then Rupe’s downmarket troops shoot themselves in the foot by concluding “Of course, none of this means Ed won’t become Prime Minister in May … The SNP could yet ensure it happens whether Britain likes it or not”. Scotland, the last time I looked, was part of Britain, and if the Sun now no longer favours the first-past-the-post electoral system used for Parliamentary elections, perhaps they would let everyone know.

And there is still something the Sun isn’t telling us. So let me refresh the hacks’ memories. Last March, the Sunday Times - another Murdoch title - told how Ingenious Media Investments got slebs to invest in British films, which would attract tax relief. Their letter told that “This proposal would accelerate the payment of the tax repaid to you by HMRC, in advance of the outcome of the current legislation”.

Who might have benefited? “Household names who invested in the firm’s ventures include the singers Geri Halliwell and Annie Lennox, television presenters Ant and Dec and Davina McCall, and England football manager Roy Hodgson, along with football stars Wayne Rooney and Steven Gerrard”. What is Miliband keen on right now? Tax avoidance. What have Ant and Dec apparently been doing? You figure it out.

Looks more like Ant and Dec have decked only themselves. No surprise there, then.