Keir Starmer's 'depressing' wealth tax plans issued stark warning for exodus of UK's top earners: 'There is no magic money tree!'

Reports of Labour's plans for a wealth tax began after ex-Labour leader Neil Kinnock claimed that Starmer was "willing to explore" the idea.

A No10 spokesman has refused to rule out the move, claiming the Government has "repeatedly said that those with the broadest shoulders carry the greatest burden, and the choices we’ve made reflect that".

They added: "But as you know, I’m not going to write the next Budget for you right now."

Delivering his verdict on the proposed tax, Griffith told GB News: "It's just depressing, the lack of understanding from this Government. They genuinely believe there's a magic money tree, it's insane.

"We have a hugely progressive tax system in this country. The top one per cent pay for 30 per cent of all income tax.

"Imagine a system that's so precarious as that if that top one per cent leave, as we're seeing day by day, more evidence mounting that they are, that everybody else is going to have to pay more to make good that 30 per cent hole in income tax."

Griffiths then argued that if the Government at some point "reduces tax", they could "actually raise more money".

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He explained: "The great learning over time is that actually there's a sweet spot in tax. It's why Ireland has one of the highest levels of individual prosperity GDP per capita, the amount of their economy, their living standards.

"Because they they discovered that if you at some points reduce tax, you actually raise more money, then you can go and do things that socialists love doing, spending money on our own reformed public services, redistributing wealth within society, but you do that off the back of a bigger cake to start off with."

Quizzed by host Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg on how the Conservatives would deal with taxes, Griffiths said: "I think very much like the situation that the Conservative Government found in the 1970s, that ultimately by endlessly taxing fewer and fewer people more and more, you end up destroying economic growth.

"The remarkable thing is that it's taken this Government only 12 months what it took socialists in the 1970s years to do in terms of the economy.

"Partly that's because capital and people are more mobile, we are in a more competitive world. We're just scraping into the top 30 countries in terms of global competitiveness."

He added: "We have to fight to be a place that people want to come and live and invest or even stay, and the role of the Conservatives is to tell the hard truths.

"And the reality is, I suspect by telling those hard truths, there is a certain period of time at which popularity doesn't follow. People don't like to be confronted with the fact that we are all living beyond our means."

Highlighting that Labour must "reduce taxes" instead of increasing them and adding a wealth tax, Griffith concluded: "Believe me, we have wealth taxes and we don't need any socialist coming up with even more of those.

"I think you cut tax to get growth and you cut spending in order to cut tax, and I'm very clear we have to spend less of taxpayers money and we have to get economic growth in a proper sense.

"And the only real way of doing that from a really high level of tax is to reduce taxes.

"I can't make tax policy and I won't, and it's important that we are credible. But those inheritance taxes in particular are ones that most Conservatives find very egregious."