The UK’s super rich are preparing to leave the UK should Jeremy Corbyn enter Downing Street, a Sunday Times investigation has revealed.
A record 151 billionaires were recorded on the paper’s Rich List this year, a 9.2 per cent rise on last year with a combined wealth of nearly £525 billion.
But the prospect of a Labour government could spark a potential exodus, with tax increases prompting the wealthy to move their money out of the UK.
Jeremy Corbyn’s party led a ComRes poll on Saturday, which put Labour on 27 per cent, followed by the Brexit Party on 20 per cent and the Conservatives close behind on 19 per cent.
If elected, apart from recently touted universal basic income, Labour also plans to ask “the top 5 percent of earners” to contribute more in tax to help fund public services, while leaving tax rates for others untouched.
The boss of Coutts, the Queen’s bank, told the Sunday Times that could set in motion a potential exodus, with the wealth advisor saying he was already helping clients to move their money out of the UK.
But with a worsening inequality picture many Brits could welcome news of a policy re-think in Whitehall.
Last year Philip Alston, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, said current Government policies are entrenching high levels of poverty and inflicting unnecessary misery in one of the richest countries in the world.
He concluded that the benefits system, epitomised by Universal Credit, is driven by the desire to get across a simple set of messages that the state “no longer has your back” and that “you are on your own”.
He said: “What goes along with that is a sense that we should make the system as unwelcoming as possible.
“That people who need benefits should be reminded constantly that they are lucky to get anything.
“That nothing will be made easy” and “that sanctions should be harsh, should be immediate and should be painful”.
