THE citizens of Iceland favour a direct approach when dealing with financial malfeasance in high office. The collapse of Iceland’s three main banks in late 2008, after years of astonishing growth, almost precipitated a national nervous breakdown. Those three banks represented more than 75 per cent of Iceland’s financial system and there were genuine fears in this affluent and tranquil country that a state of anarchy might prevail.

Instead, the Icelandic people opted to protest in a way that that they had never protested before: passionately and resolutely. A series of public meetings was attended by several thousand people each week to call for the resignation of the government. It was their turn to speak truth to power and they did so eloquently. In early 2009 they stepped up the protests, increasing their intensity in a series of cacerolazo demonstrations; big, noisy and unkempt events that involved lots of banging of pots and pans. Riot police were brought in as groups of protesters attempted to gain access to the parliament buildings.

The politicians taking refuge inside must have thought they were hearing the sound of Icelandic society unravelling. They needn’t have worried; it was merely the glorious sound of a quiet nation that had finally found its voice and they were shouting: enough. After six days and nights of this the government duly called fresh elections. The people had spoken and a message had been delivered to the money-changers.

Perhaps this was why the Icelandic Prime Minister, Sigmundur Davio Gunnlaugsson, resigned so promptly on Tuesday following revelations in the Panama Papers that he once owned an offshore investment company that carried claims on those three failed banks running into millions of pounds. His wife remains a part owner. They were out on the streets again in Reykjavik on Tuesday night but following the Prime Minister’s resignation the planned demonstration had turned into a carnival.

More time will need to elapse and a few more details must emerge about his financial and tax arrangements before David Cameron will face serious demands to step down. The sum of money for which our multi-millionaire Prime Minister and his wife cashed in the chips of their offshore trust was trifling compared to that of his Icelandic counterpart. There are questions, though, about hypocrisy, transparency and, that old Tory faithful, vested interests surrounding his little windfall. Not the least of these is his apparent lobbying against EU measures that would have led to better scrutiny of trusts.

If the demands for Mr Cameron to resign do intensify don’t expect him to walk away as promptly as Mr Gunnlaugsson did this week or to fold as rapidly as the Icelandic government did in 2009. A sense of entitlement and privilege is embedded deeply in the psyche of those whose pathway into power includes Eton, Oxford and the Bullingdon Club. They are trained to brazen it out for as long as possible or at least until a body is found. What Mr Cameron also has going for him is the British public’s capacity for indifference. It seems that, no matter how deep the slew of sleaze, greed and hypocrisy runs in the UK establishment, it will never be deep enough to move ordinary British people onto the streets.

In the UK, the charge sheet against the financial sector and the politicians who have administered it is a lengthy one. Not only did Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown not see the 2008 collapse coming, they have since tried to claim credit for the fact that, after it, no one had died. Yet they still stand accused of a failure properly to regulate the banking industry. Since then we have watched bankers’ bonuses being restored to their obscene pre-collapse levels and we have witnessed thousands of blameless firms going to the wall because our state-rescued banks withdrew support. They rigged interest rates and deployed speculative instruments that were bordering on the reckless and they escaped justice. Some of them, too, are implicated in the Panama revelations that show the UK’s overseas territories to be sitting on a sewer of dirty money, much of it gained through genocide, torture and illegal wars.

The British Government can shut down the tax havens over which it holds jurisdiction. Unless, however, it is driven to do so by the massed protests we saw in Iceland, it will ride out the storm. This is when all those party donations and the millions spent on lobbying MPs and offering them directorships begin to prove their worth.

At the end of last year Mr Darling took up a position at Morgan Stanley, the global financial services firm. The former Labour chancellor and leader of the Unionist cause during the independence referendum is an upstanding fellow of unimpeachable financial rectitude. A cursory glance of Morgan Stanley’s subsidiaries reveals that more than 140 are in the Cayman Islands. I couldn’t begin to guess why a renowned global investment firm such as Morgan Stanley has such a presence in the Cayman Islands and I’m equally sure that there is absolutely nothing underhand or adventurous about this at all. And of course Mr Darling will have conducted his own rigorous due diligence on his new employers.

Yesterday, it was revealed that the name of another stalwart and responsible chap, Celtic’s major shareholder Dermot Desmond, appears in the Panama Papers doing nothing that could be deemed illegal. Celtic, of course, are more than just a football club and the billionaire Mr Desmond is more than just a shareholder.

The Mossack Fonseca documents have been leaked just as the campaign for the Scottish elections begins to heat up. To observe Nicola Sturgeon, Kezia Dugdale and Ruth Davidson gently chiding each other on what is or is not a socially just level of taxation is like watching the Magic Roundabout after you’ve just seen The Exorcist. The First Minister is right to use the Panama Papers and all they represent and Britain being knee-deep in the stuff as an opportunity to imply how different an independent Scotland could be.

The choice, when another referendum comes, will be stark. Would we prefer to set up a new country with clean money, a clean currency and backed by transparent global investment or stick with a corrupt old country where every lever of unearned power and influence is greased by dirty money laundered through a tax-haven paradise?

The Panama Papers and the slurry of bad money and political gangsterism that they reveal bring to mind Edmund Burke's admonition: "For evil to succeed requires good men to do nothing." In Iceland eight years ago and again last week the citizens rose up against evil and cleansed their country. In Britain we will prefer to dull our senses with game shows, talent contests and the never-ending royal soap opera.