The Debt Management Office is, I imagine, a single floor in a nondescript building where the walls are adorned with giant TV screens that display, minute by minute, the ticking up of the UK’s national debt.
Sharply-dressed men and women silently shuffle past the neon numbers, pausing after being caught in the screens’ tractor beam, to let out wailing screams of frustration and anguish.
So it is perhaps with a hint of desperation that this little-known branch of the Treasury suggests on its website that publicly-spirited individuals can donate, should they wish, to His Majesty’s Government to help decrease the debt-burden.
“Please help”, implore these chuggers of the state.
Their call was answered by an exclusive club of 120 success stories who call themselves “Patriotic Millionaires”. I guess you have to be rich and famous to be in this group, so it was no surprise to see the head of the big bucks, Gary Lineker, step in, along with film director Richard Curtis and music producer Brian Eno, to express their desire to give more of their millions away. They want – among other things – to add 1 or 2 per cent tax on the value of anyone rich enough to have assets over £10m. They are calling on our Government “to raise taxes on extreme levels of wealth for a fairer, better, and more hopeful Britain.”
A noble offer of help, if only Andy Burnham would stop frustrating them in doing this. Is this altruism performative? Are they seeking a political badge of honour? Maybe.
Plenty has already been written about the various difficulties of applying a tax like this and there has been a fair bit of snark aimed at this group of wealth creators. Yet I think this group of deep-pocketed patriots should be applauded for the wealth, jobs and products they have conjured up.
The problem, though, with the “Patriotic Millionaires” is that they are trapped in the tired, stagnant arguments that have characterised a large part of the debate about our sclerotic economy.
The problems are not fixed by the addition of more taxes. As millionaires, they should know this. Their offer of help should be born out of the mindset they have clearly displayed to great effect in their careers but are, maddeningly, eschewing in the face of a political climate that has concluded wealth creation is somehow “bad”.
Truth is we need to create more wealth. We need to create more millionaires.
If I were a “Patriotic Millionaire”, I would be clubbing us lot together to create a fund to invest in the ideas of the younger generation. I would be creating centres of excellence for the entrepreneurial 20-somethings, those addicted to the hustle, to show them how to scale, how to manage their businesses, how to draw in interest, how to build a brand.
A patriotic, millionaire-making boot camp. One which understands that just a 1 per cent increase in GDP is another £12bn to hand over to the greying bean counters in the Debt Management Office. A sum far greater, and more reliable, than the moderate estimate of £6bn-£10bn that the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) says a wealth tax of this kind would raise.
It’s perhaps a reflection of the politics around wealth and wealth creation that Gary and his millionaire mates seem to feel guilty about what they have achieved.
They are right that the tax base is going to have to change and that income from work, in particular, needs to be protected from being hammered even harder.
But their argument seems to stem from an attitude that has concluded that wealth generation is wrong – that is the modern-day form of plundering – when it is only wealth creation that gets this country out of the stasis we find ourselves in.
If we want to swell the coffers of the Treasury, it is time to make the patriotic case for creating more millionaires and who better to do it than the very people who define themselves as just that.
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