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Dear Mr. and Mrs. Loadsados,
I see you are leaving us. According to the people whose job it is to count the local millionaires (the real millionaires, not just the couple with the nice house in Hackney), you’re upping the ante and heading to places that are more affordable.
Henley & Partners, which makes a good living by pandering to the rich, claims that between 2017 and 2023 16,500 millionaires have migrated from the UK. Henley, the “investment migration consultancy”, seems troubled. “The forward projections for 2024 are even more worrying, with a massive net outflow of 9,500 millionaires predicted for that year alone,” it said. As fate would have it, fewer millionaires fled Russia in 2022 (when it invaded Ukraine and became the sanctions piñata) than are expected to leave the UK this year.
I don’t know: I’m sure some of you are talented, some will sponsor public things in exchange for an engraved name check, some will let a little wealth trickle down while living high. Maybe those of us who are left will miss some of it. But will we miss you? I do not know.
We read a lot about people helping migrants move and they come in all shapes and sizes. One species profits from dehumanized people who are desperate to reach a friendly, safe and secure nation where they hope to contribute and build a new life. The other is quite legitimately helping the ultra-rich, like you, to flee to far more tax-efficient nations with far less sticky red tape. The first will put you on a small dinghy, the second will put you on a superyacht.
Where did you go? Henley says a lot of you are congregating in the United Arab Emirates. At the risk of being intrusive, what do you like most about the land of “zero income tax, golden visas and a luxurious lifestyle”?
You are a funny bunch. Some of you are the citizens “from nowhere”, like Theresa May pointed with his finger, but others are the desperate-to-“get-back-in-control” type who fly a tightly ironed Union Jack over a neatly manicured lawn; which belts Do, Britain! during the Last Night of the Proms, but are doing everything they can to reduce their tax exposure. But there is no more patriotic act than paying your taxes: contributing to the continued growth, prosperity and security of the land that may have made you rich, that educated your children, that supported your staff. So escaping to what is essentially a sauna with beautiful skyscrapers to avoid paying taxes is not really a good look.
What was the straw that broke the camel’s cup? Was it the advantage of the culture wars here over competent economic management? Of anti-immigration rhetoric over raw national necessity?
It may just be a coincidence that three-quarters of Britain’s century-old reputation as a magnet for millionaires really began to fade from 2017 to 2023 – a year after the brainwave we called Brexit. With the abolition of the tax regime for foreigners (which allowed the ultra-rich, incl the prime minister’s wifeto avoid taxes on foreign profits) and the impending removal of VAT exemption When it comes to private schools, Britain is not the fun-filled playground it once was for the rich. It’s worth saying that our playgrounds aren’t the playgrounds they used to be either: your lot have built apartments on many of them. You might be able to see this from 10,000 feet as you go.
So, as we prepare to vote on the 4th of July, you vote with your Louboutin feet. More power to you: more success. If you have citizenship, leave it on the bedside table or with the driver. We can pick it up later. Think of it as yet another premium product for the money junkie: IGG, “The Irreversible Golden Goodbye.”
And now I’ll let you get off – you’ll want to watch while you pack. Because someone has to, and I doubt it’s you.
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