If you're worried about rising private school fees..

[CurlewKate]

... why not just get a better paid job? It apparently works for poor people.

Very true. There would, however, be a difference in that the state would fund the basic education element for private school children, and there would be no VAT on education. It’s very odd that those who want VAT added to school fees in the UK are often the ones who harp on about how good the Finnish system is.

International schools are often British though. No need for the kids to be homesick as loads of other brits there. Also advantage of having fast track lessons to assist in learning native language. It’s definitely not a pipe dream I have two friends who have done this and are happily living abroad with children at private international schools. The fees are an absolute bargain compared to Uk🙂. We have a property which we plan to retire to abroad. We all speak the language and can more than adequately get by. I have a lot of friends who speak additional languages, who wouldn’t find it particularly daunting. If we need to go early to avoid this tax then that’s not a problem!

We could move abroad. Husband works in finance and their fund is based offshore. Lots of people with his specialism have already gone. Would prefer not to, but if KS goes to town with taxes then it isn’t off the table. I know there be lots of “good riddance to bad rubbish” posts now but maybe think about how that leaves this country. Depleting the number of higher rate taxpayers leaves a shortfall to be paid by the less able. We have also always paid our taxes in full. We were offered a stamp duty saving scheme on a £1.65m house in 09 and chose to pay the full-amount of tax. As I said it’s about a tipping point.

See ya x

It's a funny thing - I'm the grandchildren of immigrants - more refugees, really, as they were escaping from pogroms in Eastern Europe.

When the Labour Party was overtaken by antisemites, my family and I had to think really quite seriously about packing our bags if they had got into power. It wasn't a happy, chirpy, casual thing - the idea of leaving the city and country that i've lived in all my life was a huge, terrible wrench. It would absolutely break my heart to not be a Londoner any more. i would miss so many things about my city, my country - it's my home. My children are Londoners too, and I would feel a sense of appalling fear and wrenching to have to take them away from the place they've grown up, where they feel they belong.

and all the things we love about it - the idea of no longer being able to spend time with our friends, our families, the places we visit at weekends and in the holidays- all of that. It's absolutely wrenching.

It's something we only considered because we felt like we were at true, genuine risk of immediate harm - the same reason my ancestors have had to flee countries in the past.

So I find it completely bizarre that people who presumably have histories in this country going back considerably further than mine, and children who have spent their whole lives growing up here, and have friends, families, favourite places, etc., would just casually uproot them from all that and go somewhere else unfamiliar and new - not because of fear for your life, or desperate need, but because... of slightly higher taxes.

It is an utterly alien mindset to me. I can only imagine that many of the people throwing this around as an idea have no real concept at all of what it would involve, because they've never had to be faced with the reality of a non-optional migration.

Either that, or their ties to where they live are so weak that they were probably always planning to go and live elsewhere anyway. It's just nonsense.

@BlurredEdges "So I find it completely bizarre that people who presumably have histories in this country going back considerably further than mine, and children who have spent their whole lives growing up here, and have friends, families, favourite places, etc., would just casually uproot them from all that"

They won't. Well the vast majority won't. It's just an "I'll leave and you'll miss me then" foot stamp.

@CarrotJanice how is any of that a reason to gleefully wave goodbye to people who have paid taxes which do support people who need it. The country becomes collectively poorer as we say goodbye to high earners - how is that a positive thing for the country?

I guess we have oligarchs and billionaires to fall back on when they aren’t busy avoiding paying taxes on their extreme wealth. It’s just nonsensical and smacks of jealousy and cutting off your nose to spite your face.

I find it bizarre that you considered leaving the country because of the antisemitism. This would be my last motive. There is antisemitism everywhere and we have a very Jewish way of dealing with it by not taking it seriously. Most of my relatives moved to Israel from Soviet Union in the 90s and non of them would say it’s because of antisemitism. Just a better life prospects.

We won’t be refugees. We will be economic migrants on a cushy relocation package. Your concern and bemusement are unnecessary. It probably wouldn’t be permanent either, although I’d like my DC to have a future outside the UK and moving abroad would help to facilitate that.

Not everyone has family left in the UK or on their doorstep. We already have a good friendship group in intended country and have spent long periods of time there over a span of 15 years. Infact when I’m in UK i miss things about the other country - the food, the lifestyle, the culture.

I don't think they will either. There's an existing population which already exists in quite an international, moving between countries, way, and they will just go wherever they keep the most of their money for themselves, but the majority of the people posting here don't fall into that category.

I just find it cruel and incredibly tone-deaf to the realities of what it means to have to migrate from your home.

I had to actually imagine saying to my kids, "yeah sorry, you won't see any of your friends any more, you won't see your grandparents any more, no, you won't be able to go to X Park any more, you won't be able to go on that walk or visit your favourite places or go to the events we go to every year" and the pain that would cause them.

The idea of doing that to your children not because you are fleeing in fear of your lives, but because of a slight increase in the amount that you, as a very wealthy person, are being asked to contribute to the poorer people in your society, is just... really sickening to me.

@Boshi we're not gleefully waving you goodbye because the majority of you won't actually go.

As with @BlurredEdges my dads family left their home country in the eighties to flee dictatorship where they actually couldn't stay. My dad had a medical condition and actually couldn't stay and as there was no treatment. My uncle stayed and was killed by the government.
Even then it was a massive wrench

• leaving elderly relatives
• separating from siblings and cousins
• forgetting culture and language
• raising your kids and for them to turn out well British! Not speaking the language, not carrying on the culture, marrying Brits etc
• not to mention living in a country where a significant majority fucking despises you. And THAT is universal. Spanish people hate non Spaniards. The French hate non French. Maybe Germany is slightly better? I don't know I haven't lived there.

Doing that due to tax... paying a bit more tax. I just don't get it. Your kids won't thank you. They'll flee back to what they know and you'll spend your retirement going back and forth on easyJet to see the grandkids. I am a product of my city. I love my city and I want to stay to make it better. That's why I volunteer, that's why I pay tax, that's why I write to my MP. I would only leave if I didn't feel safe.

That's strange because it's the reason that almost all Jews have moved countries, forever.

Including the Russian Jews I know who escaped in the 80s and 90s.

And the last lot of Jews who didn't take antisemitism seriously enough were in Germany in the 1940s. You may have heard about it. My family got out of Poland just in time - all of their relatives left behind were murdered.

But yeah - apparently all of my ancestors who managed to stay alive by leaving were in the wrong for 'taking it seriously'.

It’s bizarre how people craft an image of back firing plans to move abroad when in fact many have been planning it carefully and researching for years and this latest act of envy and spite by Labour will only serve to accelerate the process. Thanks for the heads up Kier. We have some time to pack lol

People make decisions due to finances all the time

If we’re betting the success of the UK on people not going…

Well, I’d rather not

We need people here paying as much as any country

This is an absurd thread. Truly. I can only assume that people have either not lived in the U.K. very long or are actually naive enough to assume that politically, matters always remain static.

And given the rate of change in the U.K. in the last five years then I do wonder whether people have been paying attention. No one is owed their privilege being maintained.

OK, that's fine. You clearly don't feel any sense of connection or emotion to where you now live, and you're fine with the idea of uprooting your children, because you want to. I'm not 'concerned and bemused' - i find it potentially a very cruel thing to do to your children.

All of your posts, everything you talk about, is about money. You'll be on 'a cushy relocation package'. You talk about paying stamp duty and not using a special tax evasion avoidance scheme like it's a great act of charity.

Newsflash - children don't care about a 'cushy relocation package'. Children are rooted in a place and social networks. They care about their friends, their extended families, the places that they know and love. People who are forced to take their children away from all that know the pain and hate having to do it to them.

Money isn't a substitute for love and meaning. Well, not for most people.

You're clearly part of a social circle where people move internationally and live in different countries regularly. That's a tiny minority of people in this country and is irrelevant.

It's Keir, by the way. Named after Keir Hardie. But I don't imagine you're very up on the history of the Labour Party.

imo it’s one if the reasons Blair did well, I meant a lot of it was on credit and high risk exposure but he didn’t do the go for the rich thing

He kept them pretty happy so they stayed and paid

The posters on this thread who claim that they're going to move to a different country because of a slight increase in the cost of private school fees say they were always going to do it anyway. So it's not really relevant - and no, the 'success of this country' doesn't depend on some not-really-very-wealthy people who like to hold everyone else to ransom if they don't get their own way.

A country where people were actively happy to pay their taxes and wanted to work together to create a more cohesive, less divided society would, in my view, be a hell of a lot more of a success than giving in to attempted blackmail from some middle-class white-collar workers with inflated ideas of their own importance.

How about rather than panicking that we have a tiny cohort of net contributors who are all going to flounce off in a huff, we make the sort of structural changes we need as a country to expand that number of net contributors.

We can’t carry on like this, being held hostage by wealthy people threatening to leave if they don’t like the tax burden is no good for anyone.

Too much power, too much wealth, too much privilege all held by a very small section of society - that needs to be tackled (and I say that as one of the net contributors).

@Pandor yes yes yes yes

Exactly what I was trying to say just above but you said it better.

I am one of these contributors and find this ridiculous. I have heard it over and over again when Labour are due to return to power. Honestly if people feel they can do better elsewhere then of course, they can move.

On the university places point, I don't think so. I work at a RG university and since ramping up access measures for disadvantaged school students, we now take fewer "normal" UK state school kids. Because we have to take a lot of international students to get enough income, and have to (partly mandated by Office for Students, partly because of the university's social contract) keep increasing the numbers from those from disadvantaged groups/areas. Student numbers from independent schools have remained pretty much the same/only slightly down, depending on subject.

The high achieving kids from state schools who aren't from low income families are now our "squeezed middle". Coupled with the higher numbers of 18 year olds for the next several years, those kids forced to move from private to state will stand less chance of a good university place, regardless of high grades achieved with tutoring or whatever.

We need to be attractive to all levels

And I don’t just mean wealthy Labour voters on here who will of course be pro Labour getting in

I look at policies and think you haven’t thought it through. Not just leaving U.K. but leave private sector, making other changes. The Non Dom one is the same, they are by definition mobile in activity

We have huge state dependency atm, I’d say we are at topping point

But even if I think it matters, the most successful Labour PM in my time did too - well the only one but he did well

He knew not to jump on that particular train of tax high and divide voters