When a Guardian columnist describes as a ‘’masterpiece’’ your idea to attract the wealthy back here by charging them £250,000 and with money going to the poor, you know as the leader of Reform you must be doing something right.
And to be fair, that’s what it is. An absolute belter. The numbers may not quite work out the way Farage has in mind, but who cares?
The general idea of ‘’robbing’’ the rich to pay the poor played well in Sherwood Forest in the 12th century, and I’m as sure as hell it will work in our polling booths 900 years later.
And by God, does the UK need some Farage magic right now. You will have seen that Britain is on track, according to the Henley Private Wealth Migration report, to lose a record 16,500 millionaires this year.
That’s twice as many high net-worth individuals as China will lose and ten times as many as Russia. I’m surprised Labour aren’t paying British Airways to put in a fast-track at airports to get the rich out even quicker.
Socialists can’t stand the wealthy- it’s actually in their DNA. They want everybody to be as skint as their voters. Labour’s soak-the-rich got a nice boost from Rachel Reeves back in November when she said non-doms would now face inheritance tax in the UK on all their worldwide assets.
Nigel Farage's 'Robin Hood' plan is a belter. We need to woo millionaires, not small boats — Kelvin MacKenzie
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Why should the rich hang around to see all their hard-earned work go to people pretending to be sick or turning down work because it actually meant they were going to have to work? How stressful.
The wealthy didn’t create those assets in the UK but would have to pay 40 per cent on them when they died. A nasty, class war decision. Anyway, that was it. Anybody with a few bob was off to somewhere else in the world which wanted the rich as their neighbour.
Strangely, that included Italy as well as the traditional spots like Dubai, where my friend Richard Desmond parked himself and his family. I was at Ascot the other day (I like going to nice places) with a guy who worked for the wealth managers St James’ Place.
He told me he wasn’t so much worried about the super wealthy leaving the country – they weren’t on his client list- but was concerned to see the middle classes with £1million in assets working out if they should go. That was a shocker to me.
This may all change with Farage’s masterpiece. His maths indicates that if 6,500 returned to the country would mean a £600 tax-free bonus for the 2.3million earning less than £23,000 a year.
Even if it doesn’t work out like that, it’s an optimistic policy. We need the wealthy. I like their big houses, their big cars, the expensive restaurants, the flights, the world we simply don’t know.
And who is filling their place? Boatloads of young men with different cultural and educational backgrounds, living rent-free as they don’t have a penny between them. I know which minority I prefer.
But that’s not the way Starmer and Co look at it. They say those leaving were Reform or Conservative followers, while the tens of thousands of Channel migrants would one day be Labour voters.
Thanks to Farage, you will now see in the months ahead all the political parties coming up with grand schemes to lure the rich back to the UK.
My advice to you is not to believe anything that the Tories offer, as in both 2022 and in March 2024, they made changes making it less attractive for rich foreign nationals to come here and live.
Even Reeves is said to be looking at easing the crackdown on the rich. I’ll believe that when I see it. Not a peep from the Lib-Dems. They probably don’t understand what tax is, having never paid it.
So, congratulations to Farage for coming up with a policy that both the poorest and the richest will benefit from. Unique in my experience.
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