Investigate ignore, deny How leaders reacted to the leaks

It was a classic TV doorstep. After doing the morning media round, Boris Johnson emerged from a booth and set off with his minders across the main hall of the Conservative party conference in Manchester. What was his reaction to the Pandora papers? And would the Tories give back the money they had accepted from certain donors?

The British prime minister professed not to have read the detail. “At the moment we are getting on with building back better,” he said. Asked whether the revelations of “corrupt deals” were embarrassing for the Tories, he replied: “You mean Tony Blair?” Johnson laughed at his own joke and scuttled off, as his aides looked furiously on.

The encounter was telling. Last week the Guardian and media partners published an extraordinary financial leak. It has exposed, among other things, the UK Conservative party’s reliance on the international superrich and on a tiny group