HOW is this for a dream team: media tycoon Rupert Murdoch and SNP shadow leader of the Commons, Pete Wishart. No, they are not the latest signings for a new series of Strictly Come Dancing (though I would pay serious money to see that Argentinian Tango), but just two of the many who have looked on the tax paid by Google and its multinational like and sniffed something rotten in the state of Britain’s tax arrangements.

As one would expect of a newspaperman, Mr Murdoch took aim at the matter like an expert marksman at a carnival shooting gallery. First, he observed, global tech companies were making enormous profits in most places and funnelling money through tax havens. Unless stopped, they would ruin local businesses who do pay. Next, their tax breaks had been facilitated by politicians who were in awe of them, such as the “posh boys” (his words) in Downing Street. Thirdly, Google had “cleverly planted dozens of their people in White House, Downing St, other governments. Most brilliant new lobbying effort yet”. Give that man a giant teddy bear. Heck, give him two; he is getting married soon, after all.

How George Osborne must be ruing his own rush to social media (or as Alan Bennett puts it, his skitter to Twitter) to trumpet what a “major victory” it was for the Government that Google had agreed to pay £130 million in back tax. Quicker than one could say “double Irish”, “Dutch sandwich” or any of the other cutesy terms used in the tax game, the deal came under fire. John McDonnell, Shadow Chancellor, questioned the amount and how it had been arrived at. The Public Accounts and Treasury committees announced inquiries. London Mayor Boris Johnson weighed in against Mr Osborne, earning a few leadership Brownie points along the way. And now the SNP and Labour have asked the European Commission to investigate. Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s Competition Commissioner, is already looking at Apple. By the by, 31 nations have signed up to a deal to share information on company tax arrangements. No more three-wise-monkeys stuff.

So this time next year we will all be Del Boy-style millionaires as multinational companies pony up all the tax we think they should be paying. Hospitals will have no waiting lists. Every state school will be as well-resourced as a private one. Child poverty will be strictly for historians to study, and you can finally give up work and stop slogging to pay the child-minder. And if you believe all that, can I interest you in a time-share villa on Mars? Maybe a cruise up the Clyde in a pokey hat? The Brooklyn Bridge?

Didn’t think so. The companies in question have been here before. Memories are still fresh in Google, Starbucks, Amazon and the like of sessions before Margaret Hodge’s Commons committee (“You are a company that says you 'do no evil’,” the Hodgester said to Matt Brittin, VP of Google UK, “and I think that you do do evil.” Ouch). Having suffered what they see as the slings and arrows of outrageous publicity-seeking on the part of politicians, the targeted firms are showing signs that up with this they are no longer prepared to put. Google wrote to the FT yesterday to point out the following: “Governments make tax law, the tax authorities independently enforce the law, and Google complies with the law”. To come up with such an answer, one fancies the Google exec in question typed “perfectly logical response to mob slating us for tax laws created by politicians they voted in”. The chap from Google is right. They are operating within the law. And according to the law, they have to do the best by their shareholders. Might as well blame a midge from biting a hiker. It is the nature of the beast that is capitalism, innit?

Yet too often we look on capitalism and the pursuit of profit not as the red in tooth and claw lion that it can be, but as the most benign of pussycats. Countries – that means you, Ireland – have laid out their tastiest treats to attract Felix to their doors. Governments and local authorities praise Tigger for bringing home jobs to areas of low unemployment, even if, as in the case of Amazon in Scotland, they do not pay the living wage. Let us never speak too harshly to Tiddles, otherwise it might go next door to live and what would the voters say then, poor things? Cats and capitalism need to roam, to be free to do their own thing, and if a few canaries get lost along the way there are plenty more birds in the trees and cat flaps/tax laws to squeeze through.

Scotland has been as blinkered on this as anyone. Once upon a time, for example, the SNP admired Ireland and its corporation-tax cutting ways so much it wanted to become Ireland Mark Two. An independent Scotland, remember, was going to slice three per cent off corporation tax. As of March 2015, that policy has changed. There is no more desire to engage in a “race to the bottom”, and just as well. Henceforth, “targeted changes in tax allowances” are the thing. Far from being new, this is just another variation on the tried and tested carrot and stick approach. You do right by Scotland and Scotland will do right by you, within reason. On that score, all power to ministers’ elbows in their efforts to arm-wrestle the living wage out of Amazon and other employers.

But then the multinationals might argue that, in return for all those lovely enterprise grants and tax breaks, they in turn have generated lots of income for the country. All those workers paying their taxes. All those other businesses benefitting, from sandwich shops to haulage firms. While no one rushes to put precise figures on each side of the equation – how much companies take versus how much they give back – it is fair to assume that the firms, not us, are on the winning side. Otherwise, why go to all that trouble and expense to minimise their tax? It has to be worth it or they would not do it.

And so we come back to where we started. If the public really wants multinationals to pay what we reckon is their fair share then governments around the world have to do vastly more than at present. They need to not just demand greater transparency but legislate for it and hire enough staff to enforce it. Those staff, in turn, need managers who are more interested in standing eyeball to eyeball with the big firms rather than sitting tete a tete over lunch. And every now and then, a few bluffs might have to be called. Society gains a lot from business, but let us not forget that the street goes two ways. Businesses are not charities. Like individuals, they pay in so that they can take out. Though handing over tax is no-one’s idea of fun, the alternative, an increasingly unequal, dysfunctional society, of the kind all around us, is no laughing matter either.