Andy Burnham swept into No 10 this week and charged his new Cabinet with “getting that cost of living down” — and now 120 millionaires, including Gary Lineker, have urged him to tax their wealth
While Britain’s poorest scrape to survive, more than 100 of its richest do something extraordinary today: Demand the government take more of their money.
Collectively, these millionaires have written to Andy Burnham with a message so blunt it should burn through every excuse politicians have hidden behind for a generation – tax us.
Not the care worker on her third shift. Not the pensioner rationing the heating. Not the family surviving on food bank parcels. The millionaires. The people whose wealth quietly breeds more wealth, while millions work themselves hollow just to make ends meet.
A two per cent tax on wealth above £10 million could raise £24 billion. Equalising capital gains tax with income tax brings in another £12 billion.
These are not radical numbers conjured from thin air. This is money sitting, growing, compounding – in accounts belonging to people who have looked at their own fortunes and said out loud: I do not need this much.
Britain has 157 billionaires
Their combined wealth now equals more than a fifth of the entire country’s GDP. A fivefold increase since 1990. And while those fortunes have ballooned beyond any sane definition of need, healthy life expectancy in the UK has collapsed, down two years in a decade, now under 61.
The sixth-largest economy on the planet ranks second-to-last among comparable wealthy nations in years lived in good health.
People are dying younger
People are dying younger in a country awash in millionaire and billionaire money. It is not misfortune. Nor is it a political choice made over decades, and it demands a political answer now. The reality of modern Britain is stark. Median household income stands at £38,900, yet a family of four needs £88,000 simply to live comfortably outside London.
That leaves the average household surviving on less than half the income required for genuine security. Not to live extravagantly. Not to feel wealthy. Simply to pay the bills, withstand an unexpected expense and face the future without fear.
How much does one person actually need?
Yet individual wealth has reached such grotesque levels that it has severed all connection to human reality. So ask yourself: how much does one person actually need?
Mr Lineker and those beside him have answered that with more courage than most politicians manage in a lifetime.
The Prime Minister should listen. Tax vast fortunes. Rescue public services. Give Britain back some decency.
