Rachel Reeves at Davos, where many of the world’s richest people gather (Image: Getty)
Chancellor can spring into action to help multi-millionaires but not – it seems – pensioners and farmers.
That’s the harsh lesson people who have been hit with some of the Treasury’s most bitterly opposed policies will draw from her moves to pacify so-called non-doms.
Millionaires are fleeing Britain. Farmers cannot pack up their fields and head abroad, and few pensioners would consider the leaving the country they have known all their lives.
More than 10,000 millionaires quit the UK in 2024 – a 157% increase on 2023. The Chancellor this week said at Davos, the global gathering in the Swiss alps for the world’s uber-rich, that she has “been listening to the concerns that have been raised by the non-dom community”.
What do pensioners who are struggling at the axing of the universal winter fuel allowance or farmers terrified they will lose family land because of inheritance changes have to do to get her attention?
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Money talks. Despite warning in its manifesto of a “nature emergency” it appears Labour is now a fan of airport expansion. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband branded the idea he might resign over a third runway at Heathrow “ridiculous” – even though he reportedly threatened to walk out of Gordon Brown’s cabinet on the issue in 2009.
The scale of economic danger facing the debt-laden UK seems to have encouraged ministers to think twice.
Labour went into the election promising to axe non-dom status, which allows people who live in Britain to avoid paying UK tax on money made overseas if they can prove their permanent home is abroad. Changes will be made so they can bring their assets to this country at a discounted rate.
Such creative flexibility would have been welcomed by Britain’s elderly, farmers, and employers who are warning of the destructive impact of hiking up National Insurance contributions in the so-called “tax on jobs”.
If the Chancellor is in listening mode she should listen to Tesco, Aldi, and Lidl who are backing the farmers. Supermarket bosses are not soggy romantics but hard-headed capitialists who understand about threats to supply chains.
Tesco has warned that nothing less than the “UK’s future food security is at stake”.
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Likewise, the likes of Age UK have warned that the end of winter fuel payments for all has “been a disaster for many older people” with the decision to link eligibility to pension credit leaving “millions of the poorest and most vulnerable unprotected”.
Again, Age UK is not an anti-Labour think tank but a charity dedicated to care of older citizens. People across the political divide raised concerns and came up with proposals for fairer ways of delivering the policy but could not change the Chancellor’s mind.
The most recent Techne poll shows just one in four people would vote Labour if there was an election tomorrow – with 24% backing either the or Reform UK.
This is a terrible position for a party of Government to be in just half a year after winning a landslide. If Sir and the Chancellor want to avoid this parliamentary term ending in another extended exile in the wilderness they need to learn to people of wisdom and experience – not just millionaires – who can see disaster ahead.