I chose to make my home in the UK, but it is falling apart, says HADLEY GAMBLE

In life, as in real estate, timing is everything. After 15 years in the Middle East, last year I made the executive decision to return to the UK.

London has long been a Mecca for foreign correspondents and, after so many years in the desert, I was keen to return to Blighty.

I duly invested in a house, settled into a new job, and thoroughly enjoyed long walks in the park, evenings at the theater, and bookstores where employees had read what they were trying to sell. But my joy wasn’t going to last.

Like many of us, he had witnessed the terrible mistakes of successive Conservative governments, but he hoped at least that Labor would use its mandate to implement some pro-growth policies.

When I met Kerr Starmer at the World Economic Forum in January 2023, I introduced him as the man most likely to be Britain’s next prime minister; It was his first Davos, but he seemed to understand immediately that the UK was not competitive and that this gathering of “the great and the good” was looking for him to change that.

I’m not sure where the charm offensive man has gone, but the Autumn Budget announced by his Chancellor of the Exchequer, which raises taxes by £40bn, the biggest tax rise in a generation, is not something that will win friends among prosecutors. payers or encourage investors.

The latest data shows that the exodus of the UK’s rich is unlike any before; a reverse migration that endangers Britain’s ability to compete.

When the Labor budget bomb dropped, I was in the middle of a meeting of the global business elite in Saudi Arabia, where most of the titans of international finance have long since given up on Europe.

With its endless bureaucracy and anti-business attitude, the continent can hardly be considered an investment destination.

Now that the Starmer government is set to do the same, it is no surprise that investing in the UK was nowhere near the agenda in Riyadh.

As a financial journalist, I had heard first-hand for months stories of the ultra-rich abandoning their bets and leaving the UK; but these were the billionaires, the one percent of the one percent, the super rich.

It now appears that those in the simple millionaire group are actively involved in the case to do the same and that is reflected in the numbers.

When I moved to the United Arab Emirates in 2009, the country was just feeling the effects of the global financial crisis, with hundreds of cars abandoned at the airport as those in the red zone fled the city to avoid their debts.

Commercial and residential real estate was empty and many predicted that this would be the end of the desert dream city.

More than a decade later, the country surpasses the United States as the world’s leading destination for millionaires.

People who have earned their money and want to keep it while living in a clean, safe and business-friendly country.

As an American, I pay taxes everywhere and now of course I also pay taxes in the UK.

I have no complaints about pay to play. But one might expect a basic understanding about the nature of the market economy, job creation and the need for a healthy tax base in a country that is home to what has until now been a hub of global capital and trade.