London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Thursday, Oct 30, 2025

Britain needs a wealth tax to pay for Covid lockdowns and to reduce inequality. But will our craven politicians even consider it?

Britain needs a wealth tax to pay for Covid lockdowns and to reduce inequality. But will our craven politicians even consider it?

A study showing that the 'one percent' are even richer than we thought puts paid to the lie that we're ‘all in this together’ – real levies on assets and property are what is needed to make the UK a functioning country again.
It seems the rich are even richer than we thought. Just in time for them, the lucky dears. For the rest of us, as we look into 2021, we’re staring unemployment, debt, and rent arrears and poverty in the face.

Without state intervention, hundreds of thousands of Britons will be thrown onto the scrapheap, with no work, no homes, and reliant on food banks for sustenance. This begs the question: is anyone in politics brave enough to suggest the unthinkable – a wealth tax and a mansion tax? Real redistribution of undeserved wealth and a genuine solution for undeserved poverty?

In January 2015, I joined 2,000 housing campaigners to march over Tower Bridge to London’s City Hall. Boris Johnson was mayor at the time, and our gripes were: the lack of affordable homes in London, local councils social cleansing the poorest from their boroughs while selling off public assets, and the richest people in the world using the London property market as safety deposit boxes to park their money.

We jubilantly sang: “The rich – the rich – we have got to get rid of the rich”

Obviously that didn’t happen – politicians love rich people and want to be wealthy like them (look at Tony Blair, for example) – but a stern look at the one percent and the damage they are causing society is well overdue. The Resolution Foundation think tank published a report last week showing that the wealthiest one percent in the UK were at least five percent wealthier than we thought.

They looked at ONS data and the Sunday Times Rich list and found that it is far more difficult than ever to calculate how wealthy the rich really are, particularly when property values are being overestimated and underestimated simultaneously, and also because a large proportion of private wealth in the UK is hidden in other assets, like shares.

Wealth inequality in the UK is rising, and that is the symptom of a society that is sick. Large wealth gaps between rich and poor make the whole country poorer. It sucks hope out of the poorest communities, strangles opportunities for working class people, terrifies the middle class, and leaves the rich in a state of perpetual denial about just how wrong being too rich really is.

In these times of Covid, where the government, the opposition, and the wider political industry apparently want us to “pull together” and see ourselves as a larger community, the truth is we have never been so divided – and no one is being fooled. The last time a chancellor, George Osborne, went for the “We are all in this together” rhetoric was after the bankers played roulette with the world economy and we, not they, lost.

The City and Wall Street bet specifically on whether the poorest would be able to pay their mortgages, and hedged on the idea that there would be financial opportunities in foreclosure and working-class people’s homelessness. What fun they must have had, and what pockets they stuffed, as they crashed the global economy.

What “all in this together” meant in 2010 was a decimation of public services needed by the working class, such as libraries, schemes to help youths, meals on wheels for old folk, and mass job losses in low-paid but previously reliable local government employment.

Hundreds of thousands of people lost jobs as street cleaners, teaching assistants, and youth workers as the government “rebalanced the economy” by cutting billions off public expenditure, with the burden disproportionally falling on those least able to take that financial hit.

It is no surprise therefore that 12 years after the banking crash, ten years of austerity measures, and now a year of lockdowns, illness, pressure on the NHS, and looming mass unemployment, the wealthiest remain untouched. Their wealth has actually increased during Covid – by billions.

So we need a government that grows some cojones and accepts that this rising and obvious wealth inequality gap is out of control and extremely damaging politically, socially, economically, physically, and spiritually. All of us need to have a grown-up conversation about real redistribution that is long-term and lasting, and not just temporary for Covid.

I have no faith that Johnson, now upgraded from mayor of London to prime minister, will be prepared to do this. In April 2020, the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, raised the Universal Credit payment by £20 a week, tacitly accepting that its current levels were impossible to live on. However, he is now warning us that the £20 a week uplift was temporary and will be removed in March 2021.

This will throw millions of people into destitution. This chancellor is unlikely to say or do anything as radical as one his celebrated predecessors and “squeeze property speculators until the pips squeak.”

If there is no political will or bravery to have that conversation of “how much is too much?” and to put in place measures like real asset taxes on property and high pay that have teeth, then the chasm between rich and poor will only continue to grow.

We need real consequences for the billionaires, property developers, and money launderers that use the UK economy and the British people as disposable systems and assets to play with and exploit, and who then sail off on their superyachts, having milked the cow dry.

Meanwhile, ordinary people are left with no jobs and depleted pensions. There needs to be a grassroots movement that demands that our governments, both local and national, act on those that simply do not know they have too much because they have been allowed to sail away from the rest of us. Today I don’t want to get rid of the rich – I just want to tax them until their eyes bleed.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
UK and Vietnam Sign Landmark Migration Deal to Fast-Track Returns of Irregular Arrivals
UK Drug-Pricing Overhaul Essential for Life-Sciences Ambition, Says GSK Chief
Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie Temporarily Leave the UK Amid Their Parents’ Royal Fallout
UK Weighs Early End to Oil and Gas Windfall Tax as Reeves Seeks Investment Commitments
UK Retail Inflation Slows as Shop Prices Fall for First Time Since Spring
Next Raises Full-Year Profit Guidance After Strong Third-Quarter Performance
Reform UK’s Lee Anderson Admits to 'Gaming' Benefits System While Advocating Crackdown
United States and South Korea Conclude Major Trade Accord Worth $350 Billion
Hurricane Melissa Strikes Cuba After Devastating Jamaica With Record Winds
Vice President Vance to Headline Turning Point USA Campus Event at Ole Miss
U.S. Targets Maritime Narco-Routes While Border Pressure to Mexico Remains Limited
Bill Gates at 70: “I Have a Real Fear of Artificial Intelligence – and Also Regret”
Elon Musk Unveils Grokipedia: An AI-Driven Alternative to Wikipedia
Saudi Arabia Unveils Vision for First-Ever "Sky Stadium" Suspended Over Desert Floor
Amazon Announces 14 000 Corporate Job Cuts as AI Investment Accelerates
UK Shop Prices Fall for First Time Since March, Food Leads the Decline
London Stock Exchange Group ADR (LNSTY) Earns Zacks Rank #1 Upgrade on Rising Earnings Outlook
Soap legend Tony Adams, long-time star of Crossroads, dies at 84
Rachel Reeves Signals Tax Increases Ahead of November Budget Amid £20-50 Billion Fiscal Gap
NatWest Past Gains of 314% Spotlight Opportunity — But Some Key Risks Remain
UK Launches ‘Golden Age’ of Nuclear with £38 Billion Sizewell C Approval
UK Announces £1.08 Billion Budget for Offshore Wind Auction to Boost 2030 Capacity
UK Seeks Steel Alliance with EU and US to Counter China’s Over-Capacity
UK Struggles to Balance China as Both Strategic Threat and Valued Trading Partner
Argentina’s Markets Surge as Milei’s Party Secures Major Win
British Journalist Sami Hamdi Detained by U.S. Authorities After Visa Revocation Amid Israel-Gaza Commentary
King Charles Unveils UK’s First LGBT+ Armed Forces Memorial at National Memorial Arboretum
At ninety-two and re-elected: Paul Biya secures eighth term in Cameroon amid unrest
Racist Incidents Against UK Nurses Surge by 55%
UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves Cites Shared Concerns With Trump Administration as Foundation for Early US-UK Trade Deal
Essentra plc: A Closer Look at a UK ‘Penny Stock’ Opportunity Amid Market Weakness
U.S. and China Near Deal to Avert Rare-Earth Export Controls Ahead of Trump-Xi Summit
Justin time: Justin Herbert Shields Madison Beer with Impressive Reflex at Lakers Game
Russia’s President Putin Declares Burevestnik Nuclear Cruise Missile Ready for Deployment
Giuffre’s Memoir Alleges Maxwell Claimed Sexual Act with Clooney
House Republicans Move to Strip NYC Mayoral Front-Runner Zohran Mamdani of U.S. Citizenship
Record-High Spoiled Ballots Signal Voter Discontent in Ireland’s 2025 Presidential Election
Philippines’ Taal Volcano Erupts Overnight with 2.4 km Ash Plume
Albania’s Virtual AI 'Minister' Diella Set to 'Birth' Eighty-Three Digital Assistants for MPs
Tesla Unveils Vision for Optimus V3 as ‘Biggest Product of All Time’, Including Surgical Capabilities
Francis Ford Coppola Auctions Luxury Watches After Self-Financed Film Flop
Convicted Sex Offender Mistakenly Freed by UK Prison Service Arrested in London
United States and China Begin Constructive Trade Negotiations Ahead of Trump–Xi Summit
U.S. Treasury Sanctions Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro over Drug-Trafficking Allegations
Miss USA Crowns Nebraska’s Audrey Eckert Amid Leadership Overhaul
‘I Am Not Done’: Kamala Harris Signals Possible 2028 White House Run
NBA Faces Integrity Crisis After Mass Arrests in Gambling Scandal
Swift Heist at the Louvre Sees Eight French Crown Jewels Stolen in Under Seven Minutes
U.S. Halts Trade Talks with Canada After Ontario Ad Using Reagan Voice Triggers Diplomatic Fallout
Microsoft AI CEO: ‘We’re making an AI that you can trust your kids to use’ — but can Microsoft rebuild its own trust before fixing the industry’s?
×