Editorial: ​Nadhim Zahawi should never have got near being made Chancellor of the Exchequer

​This should in fact have happened early last week when his tangle with the tax authorities became known.

The prime minister, Rishi Sunak, had asked his ethics advisor, Sir Laurie Magnus, to investigate, and Sir Laurie quickly concluded that Mr Zahawi had committed a “serious breach” of the Ministerial Code.

It is alarming that a former Chancellor of the Exchequer was being investigated by HM Revenue and Customs, resulting in him having to pay an estimated £1 million fine in a £4.8m settlement to cover both penalty and outstanding tax.

He had sold a large share in YouGov, which he founded, under a complex trust arrangement. It is reported that he was deemed to have been careless rather than fraudulent. This was, it seems, an audacious piece of attempted tax avoidance rather than tax evasion, which is criminal. But even so Mr Zahawi is clearly not a person of fit character to have been put in charge of the nation’s finances.

That role should never have gone to anyone who would engage in highly dubious and sophisticated tax avoidance, to avoid a small tax bill (proportionate to the overall sum of £20m plus).

Even in normal times, only people of the utmost probity should hold such a role but that is all the more so in a time of financial difficulty for the nation, and when many modestly paid tax payers are struggling in a cost-of-living crisis.

This newspaper supports limited taxes and careful public expenditure. But such a system of fiscal responsibility can only work if it has public confidence, and an extremely rich man who has been fined so heavily by the tax authorities for such conduct cannot command such confidence.

It is a damning reflection on Boris Johnson that he elevated Mr Zahari as he did.