Hadley Gamble has returned to Britain
In life, as in real estate, timing is everything. After 15 years in the Middle East, I made the executive decision last year to make my home back in the UK.
London has long been a Mecca for foreign correspondents, and after so many years in the desert, I was looking forward to being back in Blighty.
I duly invested in a home, settled into a new job, and took considerable pleasure in long perambulations in the park, evenings at the theatre and book shops where the employees have actually read what they’re trying to sell. But my joy was not to last.
Like so many of us, I had witnessed the terrible fumbling of successive Conservative governments, but hoped at the very least that Labour would use its mandate to implement some pro-growth policies.
When I met Kerr Starmer at the World Economic Forum in January 2023, I introduced him as the man who would likely be Britain’s next prime minister; it was his first Davos, but he seemed to understand immediately that the UK wasn’t competitive and that this gathering of ‘the great and the good’ were looking for him to change that.
I’m not sure where the man on the charm offensive has gone, but the Autumn Budget announced by his Chancellor of the Exchequer, raising taxes by £40billion, the single biggest tax hike in a generation, is not one to win friends amongst tax payers nor encourage investors.
Latest data shows, the exodus of the wealthy from the UK is unlike any before; a reverse migration that puts Britain’s ability to compete in peril.
Warning: It’s no surprise that investing in the UK was nowhere near the agenda in Riyadh
As the Labour budget bombshell landed, I was in the middle of a gathering of the global business elite in Saudi Arabia, where most titans of international finance have long since given up on Europe.
With its endless bureaucracy and anti-business attitude the continent can hardly be seen as an investment destination.
Now with the Starmer government set to follow-suit, it’s no surprise that investing in the UK was nowhere near the agenda in Riyadh.
As a financial journalist, I had heard first hand for months stories of the ultra wealthy pulling up stakes and exiting the UK; but these were the billionaires, the one percent of the one percent, the Uber-wealthy.
Now it seems those in the mere millionaire bracket are actively on the case to do the same and it is reflected in the numbers.
When I moved to the UAE back in 2009 the country was just feeling the effects of the global financial crisis, with hundreds of cars abandoned at the airport as those in the red skipped town to avoid their debts.
Commercial and residential real estate was empty and many predicted this was the end for the dream city in the desert.
Over a decade later, the country outranks the US as the world’s number one destination for millionaires.
People who have made their money and want to keep it all while living in a clean, safe and business-friendly country.
As an American, I pay taxes everywhere, and now of course I pay taxes in the UK, too.
I’ve got no complaints about pay-to-play. But one might expect a basic understanding about the nature of market economics, job creation and the need for a healthy tax base in a country that hosts what has until now been a hub of global capital and commerce.
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