If Reform’s new “Robin Hood tax” continues to unravel, there will be an easy scapegoat – former chairman Zia Yusuf, who announced the policy alongside Nigel Farage on Monday. Yusuf, who resigned last month in a row over burqas and then was welcomed back into the fold two days later, is already being blamed by Reformers for the policy not adding up.
Reform’s big idea was that UK residents based abroad could come back via a new “Britannia card” costing a one-off £250,000 fee, which for a 10-year period would let them off paying any tax on wealth, income or capital gains earned overseas. Closer examination then revealed that this could cost the UK £34bn of lost government revenue over five years, providing a very large and expensive tax windfall to a small number of very wealthy people.
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Asked if this all added up to “fantasy economics”, Farage replied: “I’m not clever enough to answer any of that. That just sounds completely off-the-wall nonsense.” Yusuf, whose brainchild this policy is, fared little better. Asked how the seemingly arbitrary figure of £250,000 was calculated, he said that “we looked to price it based on a figure that people would love to pay”.
The policy is Yusuf’s first big project since his resignation hokey-cokey, and many in Reform would shed no tears were it to fail. A lot of party members who, for whatever reason, seem to really dislike the Muslim Yusuf, cheered his initial departure, while he has difficult relationships with Farage ally Arron Banks and influential MP Lee Anderson.
The press conference came on the ninth anniversary of the Brexit referendum. How many of the journalists present asked Farage about the economic damage wrought by the Reform leader’s lifelong political project? Not a single one.
