Boris Johnson is the ‘Queen of Mean’

Leona Helmsley died 14 years ago so it is surprising to find her setting fiscal policy for the UK Government. When the New York real estate billionaire, dubbed the ‘Queen of Mean’, was on trial for tax evasion in 1989, her housekeeper testified that Helmsley had told her ‘only the little people pay taxes’. 

This government, lacking any discernible philosophy of its own, appears to have adopted Helmsleyism, for it too believes it is the little people who should bear the tax burden. Indeed Helmsley, who commissioned upgrades to her $11m mansion then tried to leave the contractors with the bill, would probably admire the sheer chutzpah of what No. 10 is proposing. 

Putting up National Insurance, a tax paid by younger people, to meet the care of retirees represents a redistribution of wealth from the asset-poor to the asset-rich. In order to ensure that home-owning baby boomers do not have to sell their property to finance their care, millennials and zoomers – who may never be home-owners – will instead be taxed more heavily on their earnings.