Not a million miles from where my sheep graze in Wiltshire is the home of a very rich man. So wealthy, they say, that when he jets into the UK for a couple of weeks a year, he is – for that fortnight – Britain’s richest resident.
It’s also fair to say that, among we locals, he’s one of county’s least popular people. Because when Steve Schwarzman bought the Conholt shooting estate in 2022, the American founder of the Blackstone private equity firm embarked on a truly gigantic renovation project.
It means massive earth-moving vehicles thundering along tiny rural byways. A friend counted more than 30 passing his front door in a single hour. Roads for miles around resemble the Ypres Salient. The pot-holes reach depths normally reserved for Olympic diving pools.
But not everyone is miffed. At the building site car park (floodlit because the work is around the clock) there are scores of white vans. Brickies, sparks, plumbers, plasterers, landscapers, tree surgeons. For them, this corner of Wiltshire could be the Klondike.
It’s a good example of a national affliction. A suspicion of the super-rich which overthrows reason. Class envy, but better understood as blind hatred, because it stops those who succumb to it from seeing how wealth works.
Those contractors at Conholt have had, in some instances, two or three years of reliable income. That will have allowed them to invest in equipment and new employees with confidence, knowing that the money will be there. The trickle down of cash finds its way everywhere. Our local pub, for instance, is doing better as a result of the passing tradesmen and, because it is, my student children can rely on it for much-needed bar work.
The building project is due to finish this summer. The roads will be restored and Schwarzman, while he lives (he’s 77), shows every sign of taking his patrician responsibilities as a local landowner seriously.
But even where noblesse oblige is in short supply, I would still make a case for learning to live with those who elect to park their well-upholstered backsides in Blighty, rather than Dubai, Lisbon, New York or Sydney.
The number of millionaires abandoning the UK has doubled in a year, says Colin Brazier
GB News
A handful of nights a month I stay in a posh part of West London. Walking the dogs is like joining a canine United Nations. But the owners – from Russia and the Gulf – are the ones who seem to be barking. Right into their mobile phone headsets. Maximum volume with nary a care as to who can hear about their intimate personal and business lives. And, always expecting anyone else walking towards them to shift out of their way.
Not terribly neighbourly. But then, these people don’t have neighbours like the rest of us do. They migrate constantly, and take their money with them – provided they are sure it won’t be stolen.
But theft takes different forms. London is not as safe as it was. Violent robberies of mobile phones are at record highs and, if you’re bold enough to be out wearing an expensive watch, then you run the risk of becoming a mugging statistic (and like most crime stats, ignored by the Metropolitan Police).
However, the bigger theft, the one that really stops the mega-rich from sending their private jets into British airspace, is fiscal.
We now know that the number of millionaires abandoning the UK has doubled in a year, with one said to be leaving every 45-minutes. On average, they paid £400,000 in tax every year. And that doesn’t include the jobs they sustain in hospitality, accountancy and, too frequently, divorce lawyers.
Labour has done some back-tracking recently to encourage so-called non-doms to stay. But the damage is done, and not only to those who have more money than sense.
In the UK, the richest one per cent pay 29 per cent of all income tax. More than half of income tax is paid by the the wealthiest five per cent. That a tax base should be so heavily skewed towards the rich is fair, to many. But it also leaves UK plc, very vulnerable to their departure.
I think the numbers leaving will, if anything, accelerate. The country is cloaked in a tangible blanket of despair right now. A sense prevails that Britain is ‘undeveloping’.
Public services that were once taken as a given, are giving up. Trains, roads, hospitals. Tax more! Scream the socialists. But the geese that lay the golden eggs take that as an invitation to leave, and leaving – thanks to the digital economy – has never been easier.
For the first time in my life I have recently started to ask myself whether a responsible father should be urging his children to quit the UK in search of a better future abroad. I see a government that finds it easy to destroy institutions that were decades or generations in the making. Think family farms or independent schools.
Our government fails to understand that it’s easy to tear down (or in the case of the footloose rich, force out), but can’t see that it’s incredibly difficult to build up.
Starmer’s Labour is populated by pygmy politicians whose politics never much evolved from the sixth form, never understood that sometimes we must hold our nose and – not just tolerate the vulgar rich – but welcome them with open arms.