A common pastime of the very rich is musing on where they’ll go to escape higher taxes. In the old days, my response was furious and full of English inverse snobbery: “How many yachts do you need?” I’ve stopped doing that, since it turned out they meant it.
Some have gone; others are going. It would be a mistake to keep betting that it’s just a trickle: the flow is getting stronger. Just when we most need their energy and enterprise, we are pushing it away: and making it harder to lure fresh talent.
There’ll be no violins playing for people who uproot their kids to the new Abu Dhabi branch of Harrow school, or sun themselves in Milan. But there is already huge anxiety among charities and arts organisations about the loss of donors. Like it or not, the rich have an outsize impact on investment, the tax take and philanthropy. Other countries want and value them. Why don’t we?