It has become the £31,500 question: is £31,500 all David Cameron made from holding a stake in Blairmore, an offshore investment vehicle managed and partly owned by his father Ian? Or does the information — which came to light last week with the release of the Panama Papers — just scratch the surface of Cameron’s financial machinations?

On one level, news of Cameron’s offshore fund is hardly news at all. The Cameron family’s centuries-long involvement with the smoke-and-mirrors world of finance and commerce has long been known (or at least speculated about). And Britons have reacted accordingly, greeting the revelation largely with a cynical shrug instead of — as in Iceland — impassioned street protest.

Yet even if more confirmation than revelation, the details of the Cameron family’s financial affairs — as well as the financial affairs of tens of thousands of other wealthy individuals, known and unknown — are of great consequence because they call into question some of the key myths that have sustained neoliberal politics.