HAS the Chancellor finally hit upon an elite that is universally hated?

The OECD's forum on Harmful Tax Practices is positively jubilant about netting the Cayman Islands. Officials admit that a year ago they seriously doubted they could bring such a notorious haven into the fold. Bermuda, too, has capitulated and dear old Jersey is the only renegade trumpeting its right to fly the flag of fiscal freedom (or piracy).

Curious, because this is very much a British initiative. Inland Revenue officials are leading the committee and Gordon Brown has expressed clearly his desire to abolish "designer taxation" and bring the British dependencies into line. Expressed as a moral issue, it is difficult to quarrel with the Chancellor - tax cheats, unlike university toffs, are no one's friend.

Or so, you might think. But the line between evasion and avoidance is critical to this debate. One Lord Levy, a tycoon who paid just £5,000 in taxes last year, is a friend of the Government and confidant of the Prime Minister. His diminutive contribution to the national purse represents nothing more than legitimate tax planning, apparently.

This is not about morals or even about money-laundering. It is about competition and an attempt to stem a flight of funds from high-tax countries to low-tax countries. Most OECD countries are unwilling to contemplate the sort of draconian measures that would quickly stop the export of capital. They rightly fear attempts at more stringent control would lead to the flight of people, instead of capital.

Hence, the focus on the rogue states that provide a temporary tax-free home for spare cash. And here, too, the OECD fails its ethical test. Switzerland and Luxembourg, leading repositories of flight capital, have not signed up to the OECD tax haven initiative. OECD officials say they are taking part in the process. They would, wouldn't they?

Meanwhile, impoverished Caribbean states, stripped of their privilege to sell uncompetitive bananas to Britain, look for a way out of sun-soaked poverty. Offshore financial services looked like an easy way of making the leap from an indigent economy to an information economy. But the puritanical view of the Treasury is that these countries must pay their dues before they can join the club.

So, the cravat and blazer brigade is on the run. Or is it? Will the yachts currently moored in Jersey soon be impounded to pay for hospitals and schools? Or will they disappear out to sea?

Within the OECD some officials take a more cynical view of tax matters. The do not call it evasion or avoidance. The correct term is "avoision".