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Sophia Money-Coutts says all her pals are leaving the UK

Sophia Money-Coutts has claimed her well-to-do friends are abandoning Britain in an update that has garnered little sympathy on social media.

The daughter of 9th Baron Latymer of the Coutts family who founded the private bank that prompted a Nigel Farage-shaped kick-off last year, used research conducted by Henley & Partners to form the basis of her latest column.

The firm, which helps millionaires and billionaires work out where they want to move when the tax regime becomes too onerous at home, claims 5,300 millionaires will leave the UK before the year is out, with 4,200 abandoning ship already to avoid likely tax rises in the next budget.

And it’s not just millionaires fleeing, Money-Coutts mused. It’s privately-educated professionals living in “unglamorous pockets of London” such as Brixton, Acton and even TOOTING who are leaving because “nothing works here anymore”.

Her Telegraph column has raised eyebrows among a number of people on social media who have questioned why her friends have only just decided, after 14 years of ruinous Conservative rule, that things no longer work here anymore.

It comes as Pimlico Plumbers founder Charlie Mullins announced he is preparing to flee the country that made him the ‘richest plumber’ on the island to escape Labour asking those with the “broadest shoulders” to bear the “heaviest burden”.

The 71-year-old, who made £145 million when he sold his firm in 2021, said he wants to have “no assets in the UK whatsoever” and intends on paying no tax next year as he flees for Spain and Dubai.

He has put his £12 million London penthouse on the market, saying his family would “go mad” if they had to pay inheritance tax because of it.

Mullins, who previously called Labour’s plans ‘a typical socialist money-grab’, has been outspoken about his plans to leave the country to avoid being hit by Labour’s tax raid.

He told The Telegraph: “I’ll have no investments here, no bank account here. It’s all in the process now. I think my last tax bill is January and that’s me done.”

Related: Brexit red tape causes UK-EU goods trade to slump – and the problem is getting worse

Jack Peat

Jack is a business and economics journalist and the founder of The London Economic (TLE). He has contributed articles to VICE, Huffington Post and Independent and is a published author. Jack read History at the University of Wales, Bangor and has a Masters in Journalism from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

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