Are the super rich really abandoning Britain?

With an urgency not always noted in plumbers, Charlie Mullins announced earlier this year that he was leaving the country, before even waiting for the Budget fallout. He put his £12 million penthouse on the market and is busy buying up properties in Spain and Dubai, between which he will now spend his time. Inheritance tax, he said, was his main bugbear. He has already cashed out of his business, Pimlico Plumbers, which he sold for £145 million three years ago.

He didn’t even wait for the budget, but now it has been delivered has the real exodus begun? To judge by the headlines, Mullins is just one in an exodus of multi-millionaires who are evacuating the country in their (now more taxed) private jets. ‘The very fabric of our economy is being ripped apart,’ warns James Dyson. It has been hard to read the business pages of a newspaper in recent weeks without seeing an estimate from Henley & Partners that Britain will suffer a net loss of 9,500 high net worth individuals this year, who will take their wealth, businesses and tax revenues with them.