Last year alone 10,800 millionaires, 78 centi-millionaires – those with £100million and over – and 12 billionaires left the UK and, humiliatingly for Keir Starmer, the latest billionaire preparing to pack his bags and take flight with his £14.9billion fortune is one-time Labour donor Lakshmi Mittal.
And who can blame them when we have a government hellbent on killing off enterprise and aspiration?
I initially thought Labour’s disastrous decision making was born mainly out of incompetence, especially given its underwhelming cabinet ministers – such as Rachel “from accounts” Reeves and Jonathan Reynolds, who claimed he was a solicitor even though he wasn’t – and not a business brain among them.
But I was wrong. The biggest issue – in a country historically described as a “nation of shop keepers” and whose money comes from the endeavour of the individual – is their visceral hatred of the individual’s success and their belief that the state knows best.
Reeves led the charge with her disastrous budget last October where she imposed an extra £40billon of taxes on those already feeling the pinch. This has forced businesses to either close, cut jobs or look for opportunities abroad.
Businesses of all sizes and in all sectors made clear how disastrous the consequences of that budget would be for the country.
So, you might have thought when Reeves came to the House last Wednesday to give her emergency statement – having had five months to reflect on it – she would have listened to the country’s taxpayers and businesses and set out her stall on how she planned to support them. No such luck. Tin-eared and defiant, she ploughed on.
So these wealth-creating Brits, ignored at home and wooed from abroad, are flying off for better opportunities and lifestyles overseas. And they’re not just bolting the country for tax purposes.
They feel pushed away from a Britain they no longer recognise: where freedoms are being eroded, private schools are being dismantled, streets are becoming more dangerous, immigration is out of control, Christian celebrations are rejected and, worst of all, an arbitrary and malign two-tier police system is emerging, making the country less safe.
For how can it be right, that six police officers turn up to arrest parents for questing the recruitment process of a teacher on a WhatsApp group, as they recently did, and yet burglaries, thefts and violent attacks can go undetected?
That dangerous foreign criminals can stay in Britain on the most spurious of grounds, such as their children don’t like foreign chicken nuggets, making our streets less safe, when really it should be these criminals, not our brightest and best, exiting our country.
The simple truth is, Brits no longer want to pay more and more, while getting less and less, in a country they no longer recognise.
This haemorrhaging of talent has only just begun, as have Labour tax rises, and Reeves will be back in the autumn demanding more money, from those of us left, in her budget.
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Jude Law looks uncannily like Vladimir Putin in the upcoming film The Wizard of the Kremlin.
He is an actor hard to typecast and easily shifts from Hollywood heartthrob in The Holiday to sinister assassin in Road To Perdition.
I think Law has turned out to be one of the UK’s greatest and most versatile actors and playing Putin is yet another feather in his acting cap.
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How on earth did Prince Harry get embroiled in such an unseemly spat over the charity he set up – Sentebale – in his mother’s memory?
He along with co-founder Prince Seeiso of Lesotho and other trustees have stood down from the charity leaving the chair Dr Sophie Chandauka accusing Harry of “harassment and bullying at scale” and labelling the Sussex brand of being “toxic.”
Now I’m not a fan of the post-Meghan Harry, but even I find these accusations difficult to believe. Sadly, I’m sure there’ll be a lot more mud slinging before we get to the truth.
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This week Keir Starmer is poised to rejoin the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) carbon market, to accept the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and align with EU rules to hit Net Zero, making UK energy bills even higher.
All of which the UK left when Brexit took effect at the end of 2020. What an idiotic betrayal of the British public.
Already energy prices in the UK are 50% higher than France and 100% higher than the US. Linking the UK to the EU’s ETS will push the carbon price per tonne of carbon dioxide from £40.16 to £59.57.
This will be yet another nail in the coffin of many British manufacturer as it pushes energy prices even higher. It seems Labour is intent on destroy businesses in this country and pushing manufacturing overseas.
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Former Cabinet Minister Sir John Redwood came up to my Tatton constituency over the weekend to speak to my local Conservative Association.
John is one of the finest political minds of his generation and Kemi Badenoch would do well to heed his advice.
Over the weekend he informed my members that the Bank of England had lost a whopping £38billion over the last year on misguided bond trades and that the total loss over the years would amount to over £240billion – money that you and I reimburse them for as taxpayers that could be better spent elsewhere.
What I want to know is who at the Bank of England is being held accountable for this gross incompetence.
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Twenty (mainly Labour) Parliamentarians have called for money to be spent on a new airport in Mirpur, Pakistan.
Many of these same politicians have voiced their opposition to a third runway at Heathrow because of the damage flying does to the climate.
Do these MPs think flights to Pakistan come with a different environmental outcome than those that come to Heathrow? Or (more likely) do they care more about the economy in Pakistan than they do in England?
Whatever the explanation, it really is extraordinary.
