Plenty of people had reason to ridicule the Occupy protesters at St Paul's, and it wasn't difficult to do. They lent a chaotic look to a great landmark, preferred chaotic procedures to any hint of hierarchy, and took a number of chaotic characters under their wing. The home secretary cited demonstrators' cappuccino-slurping as proof of hypocrisy, while London's mayor expanded Britain's word power by demanding that the "bivouacked crusties" be dispersed.

For four and a half long months, however, the camp remained in place – through the bleak midwinter and beyond, until the bailiffs and police finally turned up in force in the small hours of Tuesday. During their time, the protesters have had more success than they can ever have expected in constructing, well, a big tent. The cathedral was forced into serious soul-searching from which much Christian sympathy emerged, the local Tory MP endorsed Occupy's agenda if not its methods, and party leaders are now falling over each other in their rush to denounce crony capitalism. Where turn-of-the-millennium Stop the City protests were the preserve of socialist students, opinion polls this time have found middle Britain more inclined to applaud Occupy's idealism than to dismiss it as naive. The self-styled grown-ups who dash out to decry any demonstration that creates inconvenience (and what demo doesn't?) have found that one particular charge wouldn't stick – namely, Occupy's failure to come up with answers. The difficulty was less that the charge was awry, although some Occupiers did sketch out first thoughts on a new political economy in the FT. No, the real difficulty is that – amid the crisis – it is perfectly clear that the establishment is itself bereft of solutions.

Take yesterday's breathtaking news about Barclays' complex wheezes to avoid £500m in tax – which feature a rebate in respect of tax that has never been paid. The same politicians who say we cannot afford disability benefits and children's centres approach tax with kid gloves. Here is a public company that has been utterly reliant on all manner of public guarantees, going to ingenious lengths to avoid its public responsibilities. Even as the government announced that it would close the loophole, the first instinct was to spare the bank's shame by refusing to name it, out of deference to a supposedly hallowed principle of taxpayer confidentiality – a doctrine that developed purely to protect individuals, but which is now misapplied to spare corporate blushes. Proper regulation to prevent such schemes was shunned in favour of a gentlemen's agreement with the banks that they would follow the spirit as well as the letter of tax law.

A quarter-century on from the big bang, it is all reminiscent of the clubby world of the old City, from which St Paul's itself is not immune. The cathedral's hand-wringing statement – regretting an eviction that it had acquiesced in – promised to "promote" social justice from the heart of the City, through worthy seminars doomed to remain below the radar. Occupy's obsessive consensualism made it frustratingly difficult to pin down on the issues, but at least this most peculiar way of working ensured that leaders could not be picked off, wined and dined in the traditional Square Mile manner.

For the rest of us, who do not need a unanimous open assembly to agree every little thing to be done, the Barclays tale cries out for a sweeping response. Not merely the specific legislation to claw back the lost cash which is now on the way, but also a firm obligation on every company to publish what tax it pays where, as well as a full-blooded general anti-avoidance law, and not merely the heavily qualified alternative that is in the works.

Making firms pay proper tax is only a first step towards a responsible capitalism where the profit motive is society's servant, not its master. But even as commercial scandals engulf welfare, plans that will deepen burgeoning corporate involvement in the NHS speed towards the statute book. Britain fears corporate power as never before. In its shambolic way, Occupy has lent voice to the unease.