𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

A staggering 6,100 company directors have left the UK over the past 12 months – an increase of 42% – in response to Labour’s high-tax, anti-business regime. If Rachel Reeves adds yet more burdens on entrepreneurs and business owners in today’s budget, we will witness a brain drain the likes of which we haven’t seen since the 1970s.

Companies House figures reveal thousands have changed their country of residence from the UK to overseas. This comes hot on the heels of revised government figures showing that 257,000 Britons left the UK last year – up from an estimated 77,000. All of which is calamitous for the British economy which will only get worse if the exodus of wealth-creating people continues.

But what can we expect with a government that puts up taxes to spend more on benefits? It’s little wonder hard-working folk are taking their chances abroad where taxes are lower, regulations are less arduous and their skills are valued. Even pensioners are likely to find a more comfortable regime for their retirement overseas.

All of which is taking billions of pounds out of the British economy and reducing the pool of taxation to pay for Labour’s generosity towards the non-working classes. We are at risk of a vicious circle of poverty if the people who create wealth and drive growth leave. The majority of new arrivals are low-skilled. I doubt there are many tech tycoons, software engineers or AI experts in the small boats.

In a major sign of discontent with the Chancellor, some of our richest residents have already voted with their feet and left our shores. Steel billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, one of Britain;s richest men, has quit Britain for Dubai but is registered in Switzerland for tax reasons.

“The issue was inheritance tax,” explained an adviser close to the Mittals. “Many wealthy people from overseas cannot understand why all of their assets, wherever they are in the world, should be subject to inheritance tax imposed by the UK Treasury.”

Nik Storonsky, the billionaire co-founder of finance-app Revolut, has also upped sticks for the United Arab Emirates thanks to Labour’s abolition of non-dom tax status. The pair are just two of more than 4,000 ultra-rich people leaving the UK over the past year.

This might delight the class war fanatics of the hard-Left but they take with them good, well-paid jobs, tax and growth opportunities – billions of pounds lost to the UK in investment and employment. And this affects us all.

Even those who are staying in the UK are reducing their investments. Self-made billionaire Ineos owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe has had enough of the Labour’s pie-in-the-sky net-zero energy policy.

Earlier this autumn, he announced he was pulling £3billion of British investment, coming soon after being forced to close his Grangemouth oil refinery with the loss of 400 skilled jobs. “Our future investment will not be in the UK,” a spokesman said. “There’s no question of that. The problem is that the UK has become one of the most unstable fiscal regimes in the world from a perspective of natural resources and energy.”

How bad is that? A British-born founder of a global business empire is being forced to divert investment away from the UK to other more business-friendly nations. This lack of confidence in Labour’s Britain was articulated perfectly by US Ambassador Warren Stephens last Friday at an event in the heart of the City of London, when he advised Britain to change its energy policy and start drilling again in the North Sea.

He is worried sky-high energy costs in Britain are weakening our economy and undermining our ability to be a strong ally to the US – a concern shared by Donald Trump.

Putting party before nation, both Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer are triggering a suicidal economic path in which business and hard-working families are being taxed to appease Left-wing backbenchers hungry for ever more benefits and expenditure.

The public sector is quite simply bleeding the nation dry, with ever-rising wages, gold-plated pensions and falling productivity. And the non-working classes are growing at an exponential rate. It’s little wonder that anyone with a degree of energy, enterprise and money is choosing to leave Britain and try their luck abroad.

We can only hope a future government will see sense and support wealth and growth creators to help return the country to a golden age of invention and enterprise. Sadly, by then it might already be too late.