Last call for Starbucks. Your flight is about to depart

A friend of mine who has worked in the City all his life, and is by no means a leftist, can still explode with rage at the nom-doms and corporations, who expect to stay in Britain without paying tax. When their representatives say they will leave if the government taxes them, he replies

“Fine. If you don’t like paying the taxes the rest of us have to pay, there’s a big road heading out of London called the M4. Take it, and hang a right at the sign marked Heathrow.”

He understands that the notion of the state granting tax exemptions to fortunate classes ought to have died when the French revolutionaries abolished the privileges of the noble and clerical estates in 1789. So does Jesse Norman, whose conservative assault on crony capitalism you can read here, and the other intelligent Conservative I write about in my Observer column this week. So, apparently, does David Cameron.