In order for the UK state and all its constituent parts to provide the services that people need – and to tackle ills in society such as poverty, inequality and the cost of living crisis – there needs to be sufficient public resource. That principally needs to come from taxation, which I feel must be fair and redistributive.
I am therefore pleased that 120 millionaires have written to the new Prime Minister, calling on him to tax the rich more. Calling themselves the “Patriotic Millionaires,” their open letter states: “We can afford it. We’re not talking about higher taxes on those who get up and go to work for their income every day, but on the very richest whose income is derived from the wealth they hold.” The letter also states that they “love this country” and “we want it to succeed,” adding: “It’s time to tax us, the super rich.”
Signatories include former footballer and commentator Gary Lineker, musician Brian Eno, screenwriter and director Richard Curtis, the former Greggs managing director Ian Gregg, the crime writer Val McDermid and a financial trader-turned-equality campaigner Gary Stevenson. In one radio interview, Eno was a little more blunt. He said that the tax system was “very generous to rich people,” adding that “if you’re wealthy, you don’t pay very much tax but hire a clever bunch of accountants who somehow get you off that.”
There has been the inevitable criticism of this particular batch of millionaires. Some have resurrected the age-old argument that, if you tax the very-well-off, they will all disappear overseas, taking their wealth with them. While I agree with Brian Eno that many people play the tax system, that is not a reason not to do the right thing by the vast majority of people and their public services.
There have been other comments that rich people can often be philanthropic and therefore do not need to be pay more tax. Doesn’t seem a particularly logical argument to me. Maybe the proponents of this argument will also look to reduce the tax burden on the less-well-off in the hope that they might give a few quid to charity!
I was particularly disappointed with the response of the leader of the Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, who simply suggested that millionaires would be “very welcome to pay more tax” and they could send a “cheque to the Treasury …” This is hardly the structural change that is needed in the taxation system that economists from the Progressive Economy Forum and the Paris School of Economics say would “raise meaningful revenues and dampen runaway inequality.”
Article published in the Cornish Guardian (12th August 2026) and West Briton newspapers (13th August 2026)