A tax rate that enrages Middle England
In this current boom, the super-rich are making such extraordinary fortunes that they are not just stoking the suspicion of the working class, but the well-paid middle classes, too. The battle lines in Britain’s class war are shifting: it is no longer Citizen Smith and the Tooting Popular Front agitating for change, but Mr and Mrs Smith and the Wimbledon Neighbourhood Watch scheme who are crying "Power to the People!"
University-educated men and women working hard and enjoying successful careers in public companies are finding themselves frozen out of swaths of the London property market by a new breed of wealth: hedge fund managers, private equity partners and investment bankers. There are signs of a new kind of fissure between the reasonably well-off and the absurdly wealthy – not a blue-collar/white-collar divide, but suit-and-tie versus open-necked shirt; not over how much you are paid, but how: are you someone who measures your earnings in salary or capital gains?
In this context, Nicholas Ferguson’s observation that many private equity executives are "paying less tax than a cleaning lady" has only played to the politics of middle-class envy.
