Is this honest?

Sometimes we look at poilitical advertisements and assume that what they say is correct - in the current campaign by 38 Degrees, they have published an advertisement that seeks to draw attention to what they see as 'tax dodging' and the contentious claims made by Richard Murphy and others (often on Richard Murphy's assumptions) that it costs the Revenue some tens of billions in lost taxes - now that may be a political aim that you support or it may not, but that is not what I complain about today ...

Here is the advertisement that I consider to be misleading (at best) -

Now most of the advertisement is fine - but then there is the assertion that George Osborne is 'also dodging £1.6 million of tax himself.'

Now this allegation appears to be based on the assertions (not denied, I hasten to add) that George Osborne is the beneficiary of trusts set up by his father and into which his father has transferred shares in the company that father set up and ran/runs.  If that is the basis on which the allegation in the advertisement is made, then to assert that George Osborne has done anything to 'dodge' tax is to confuse father with son - as a result, the allegation that George Osborns is 'also dodging tax himself' is both misleading and, in my view, dishonest. 

George Osborne has, on the basis of those bare facts, done nothing personally - he may well be the beneficiary of a measure taken by his father to reduce tax on father's death, but there is simply no basis from those facts which can be reasonably taken to show that George Osborne has done anything at all, let alone 'dodged tax'. This is not mere semantics - as the allegation in the advertisement is that George Osborne has done something to reduce his tax liability - and unless the facts underlying this allegation are very different to those in the public domain, this allegation is untrue.

I have telephoned 38 Degrees from the link in their website, to ask for their comment.  They took my name and number and I will post their response when I receive it - I suspect that I will live in hope, but we'll see.