Britain’s millionaires are fleeing. Good night time and good luck, I say | Nels Abbey

Expensive Mr and & Mrs Loadsadosh,

I see you might be leaving us. In line with the folks whose job it’s to depend our resident millionaires (correct millionaires, not simply the couple with a gentrified home in Hackney), you’re upping sticks and heading to locations extra amenable.

Henley & Companions, which makes a high-quality dwelling cosseting the rich, claims that between 2017 and 2023, 16,500 millionaires migrated from the UK. Henley, the “funding migration consultancy”, appears perturbed. “Provisional estimates for 2024 are much more regarding, with a large internet outflow of 9,500 millionaires projected for this 12 months alone,” it says. As destiny would have it, fewer millionaires fled Russia in 2022 (because it invaded Ukraine and have become a sanctions piñata), than are anticipated to go away the UK this 12 months.

I don’t know: I’m certain a few of you might be gifted, some will sponsor public issues in return for an engraved name-check, some will enable a bit of wealth to trickle down whereas dwelling excessive on the hog. Possibly these of us left behind will miss a few of that. However will we miss you? I don’t know.

We learn so much about individuals who assist migrants transfer round and so they are available all sizes and styles. One form capitalises on dehumanised folks determined to succeed in a pleasant, protected and safe nation the place they hope to contribute and construct a brand new life. The opposite fairly legally helps the ultra-wealthy, corresponding to yourselves, flee to nations that are way more tax-efficient, with far much less sticky purple tape. The previous will dump you on a small dinghy, the latter will usher you on to a superyacht.

The place are you off to? Henley says proportion of you might be converging within the United Arab Emirates. On the danger of being intrusive, what’s it concerning the land of “zero revenue tax, golden visas and a luxurious way of life” you most like?

You’re a humorous bunch. A few of you’re the residents “of nowhere” who Theresa Could pointed her finger at, however others are the kind who had been determined to “take again management”, who fly a crisply ironed union jack on a neatly manicured garden; who belt out Rule, Britannia! throughout Final Evening of the Proms, however do all the things they’ll to shrink their tax publicity. However there is no such thing as a extra patriotic act than paying your taxes: contributing to the continued progress, prosperity and safety of the land which may have made you rich, that schooled your kids, that sustained your workers. So fleeing to what’s mainly a sauna with fairly skyscrapers so as to keep away from paying taxes just isn’t actually look.

What was the straw that broke the camel’s again? Was it the primacy of tradition wars right here over competent financial stewardship? Of anti-immigration rhetoric over crude nationwide necessity?

It could be mere coincidence that Britain’s three-quarters of a century-long status for being a millionaire magnet actually started to wane from 2017 to 2023 – a 12 months after the brainwave we referred to as Brexit. With the abolition of the non-dom tax regime (which permitted the super-wealthy, together with the prime minister’s wife, to keep away from tax on international earnings), and the pending removing of the VAT exemption on personal colleges, Britain just isn’t the fun-packed playground it as soon as was for the money wealthy. Value saying that our playgrounds aren’t the playgrounds they was both: your lot constructed flats on a lot of them. You could possibly see that from 10,000ft as you head off.

In order we put together to vote on 4 July, you’re voting together with your Louboutin-shod toes. Much more energy to you: extra success. When you have citizenship, go away it on the bedside desk or with the chauffeur. We are able to choose it up later. See it as one other premium product for the monied refusnik: the IGG, the “Irreversible Golden Goodbye”.

And now, I’ll allow you to get off – you’ll be eager to supervise whereas your luggage are packed. As a result of somebody has to do it, and I doubt it’s you.