Peter Kyle has just given Rachel Reeves’s game away
An illiterate animal herder is no substitute for the doctors and police officers leaving for better wages in Australia and the US
When the last taxpayers leave Britain, who will be left to keep the lights on? Business Secretary Peter Kyle has finally admitted what everyone else already knew: Keir Starmer is winning his war on private wealth, with Labour’s tax raids driving the wealthy and the high income overseas.
Not to worry, however: Kyle assures us that “other people” are coming to Britain “because of the excitement in our economy at the moment”. And this is true, in the sense that great many people are flowing through Calais for an exciting opportunity to work illegally in the delivery sector while staying in a state-funded hotel room. But it still leaves Britain with a headache: the problem of migration isn’t just one of population size, but composition.
The discovery that the number of British citizens leaving the country is far higher than previously estimated is a perfect illustration of the point. Last year, for instance, what was originally a small outflow of 17,000 British citizens has become a torrent at 114,000. Overall, somewhere around 342,000 more British people left the country between 2021 and 2024; roughly the population of Blackburn, York and Shrewsbury combined.
Ask the Office for Budget Responsibility or the enthusiastic migration advocates on the Labour benches, and they probably don’t think this is a problem: one person leaves, another comes in. What the focus on overall numbers misses, however, is that the problem of migration isn’t just one of population size, but composition.
Take, for instance, a British doctor, educated at great expense to the taxpayer and ready to start work. Thanks to the wonders of the British health system, their application for a training place is ranked not by their ability, but by a randomised draw. They end up far away from home, earning about £39,000. And they are understandably unhappy about it. After a while, they head to Australia for better pay, better hours, and better weather. Their contribution to our migration figures is -1.
Now take the case of an illiterate animal herder who enters the UK illegally fleeing officials in his home country who want to arrest him for his part in a tribal war. His contribution to the migration figures is +1. Together, the doctor and the asylum seeker net out at 0. So far as net migration goes, nothing has changed. From every other perspective, Britain is considerably worse off.
[…]
Let’s go back to our doctor. They’re far from alone in heading to Australia: net migration from Britain has more than doubled since 2019, driven mostly by fewer Brits coming back (no more “ping-poms”). Among those going out to Australia on visas with potential for permanent residency were 1,061 GPs and resident medical officers, 710 registered nurses, 239 police officers, and a long list of well-paid jobs: accountants, engineers, teachers and skilled tradesmen.
[…]
The migration coming into Britain, meanwhile, is more varied in quality. In the last year of data, Britain issued 871,000 non-visitor visas. About 183,000 – or 21 per cent – went to work applicants. Another 103,000 or so went to their dependents. The rest were a mishmash of students, family, and so on. On top of these numbers, we can add on 47,000 irregular arrivals.
This is a poor starting point: only a small fraction of the flow is people who have been selected on the basis of their ability to contribute to the economy. And to make matters worse, these work visas don’t necessarily go to the sort of worker you’d expect to receive them.
The Telegraph; continue reading
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People are Leaving Britain in Droves, We Face a “Growth Emergency” and Labour’s Tax Bonanza is Driving Wealth out of Britain, Admits Business Secretary
People are leaving Britain in droves, we face a “growth emergency” and Labour’s tax bonanza is driving wealth out of Britain, Business Secretary Peter Kyle has said in an extraordinary admission. The Mail has the story.
Business Secretary Peter Kyle said he was worried entrepreneurs were leaving in “droves”, adding that he would not “duck” the impact of the higher tax burden and decision to abolish non-dom status.
In a round of interviews as the fateful package looms, he also apologised for the chaotic briefing of what will be in it. …
It emerged at the weekend that billionaire former Labour donor Lakshmi Mittal has became the latest big name to quit Britain.
The Indian-born steel tycoon will now reportedly spend much of the future in Dubai and is registered as a resident in Switzerland for tax.
Asked about the reports, Mr Kyle told Sky News it was a “worry” for the government “whenever anyone needs to leave the UK to succeed”.
“But what I don’t want to do is we as a country just focus just on the billionaires because there are other people that have needed to leave,” he said.
“There are people starting businesses that have gone to America actually in their droves, because they haven’t had the funding that they need in this country to succeed.
“And that is something that we are fundamentally stopping the need for by recapitalising the markets here and putting a lot of work in for those spinouts and those start-ups, those scale up companies.
Pressed whether he acknowledged that “some of it is because of the tax decisions of this Labour Government”, Mr Kyle said: “I do.”
He added: “Yes, I do, I do. Now I’m not going to duck the fact that we have put up taxes and we’ve closed some of the loopholes for non-doms.
“On the other hand, we’ve set up this, a global talent taskforce. We have set up a global talent visa.
“We are making it easy, easier for people to come here who have high talents.
“Now, some people are going to leave because they were here, because of the way that the old non-dom system works.
“There are other people who are coming to this country because of the excitement that’s in our economy at the moment.
“The fact that we’re investing in AI, that people like Jensen Huang from Nvidia, the biggest company in the world, says we’re going through a Goldilocks moment as a country when it comes to AI.
“So lots of people are coming here because of the new excitement in our country. But I accept because of some of the decisions we’ve made, like closing those non-dom tax loopholes, some people will feel the need to leave.”
Speaking at the CBI conference, Mr Kyle said the UK is still in a “growth emergency”. …
“I really think we have inherited growth emergency, and we are still in it, and we will be in it for as long as we are unable to get our way out of this situation without increased economic productivity.”
Worth reading in full.
Featured image: Sky News
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