Her Majesty is taught modern morality
by Alexander Boot:
Fire-eating republicans must be blessed with a heightened moral sense, reaching cosmic altitudes inaccessible to most people.
This conclusion is hard to escape looking at the people who are most vociferous in castigating the Queen’s investment strategy. Apparently, Her Majesty “minimised her tax exposure”, to use City jargon, by putting some of her money into offshore shelters.
In some quarters, this practice is called tax avoidance, which is legal, as opposed to tax evasion, which isn’t.
Now not even the Queen’s fiercest critics think that Her Majesty personally makes her financial decisions, or issues to her advisers instructions along the lines of “One wishes to screw one’s government out of every penny one can.”
Nor do they suggest that tax avoidance is illegal. However, they insist that there exists a higher morality than that codified in statutes.
As a Christian, I welcome this sentiment on general principle. In case of conflict, heavenly morality laid down in Exodus and Matthew does trump human laws any day of the week and twice on Sundays. (Yes, I know it’s a tired cliché, but it seems appropriate in this context.)
The trouble is that Her Majesty’s detractors are guided by a higher morality of a different sort from that laid down in Exodus and Matthew and widely reaffirmed on Sundays. Their God isn’t that of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They worship at the altar of another deity: the state.
Read also: Lower taxes are the rights of Man by Jules Gomes, The Conservative Woman
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