Patriotic Millionaires UK, led by the former City trader Gary Stevenson and endorsed by Gary Lineker, has ‘100-plus’ members but claims to speak for ‘the majority of UK millionaires’ – doubtful, given that 150,000 homeowners in the south-east of England notionally fall into the seven-digit category. Under the slogan ‘Tax us, we’re proud to pay and here to stay’, the two Garys have offered Andy Burnham a ten-point plan to raise ‘over £50 billion in a single year’. Top of the list, at £24 billion, is a 2 per cent tax on assets over £10 million that has been dismissed by tax experts as one of the fastest ways to drive wealth out of the country, confirmed by news that Scotland’s 48p top rate of income tax (compared with 45p in England), enacted in 2024, resulted in a drop in tax collected.

Among their other ideas, ‘tax private jets more’ and ‘close the carried interest loophole so private equity bosses pay their fair share’ might well win public approval. But overall, the exercise does a disservice to already tax-burdened fellow citizens by encouraging Burnham and Chancellor John Healey to believe higher taxes generally and wealth taxes in particular, with celebrity endorsements, can fund profligate public spending.

So let me offer the self-styled patriots my own multi-point plan to direct their fortunes in ways that might really help balance the Treasury books while addressing inequalities, about which they claim to care. First, proudly or otherwise, pay all the taxes you owe. Don’t pay lawyers and accountants to devise fancy offshore avoidance schemes; donate what you might have spent that way to a charity which helps young people gain skills, find work and start businesses. If you’re seriously rich, set up your own foundation and invite charities of all kinds to apply for grants. Charities almost always spend money more effectively than the state.

Next, allocate part of your pile to venture capital. Back a dozen start-ups in anything from AI to English wines, in the expectation that at least one of them will take off and pay back what you lose on the others. You might also buy and re-open your closed-down local pub; and feed your vanity by commissioning an impecunious artist to paint your portrait. You boast you’re ‘the super rich’ who ‘can afford it’: so be an active economic citizen, a catalyst for enterprise and a creative philanthropist. But do so as quietly as you can, without hectoring the rest of us.

Early exit for Bailey?

Excited about the race to be the next boss of the European Central Bank? Neither am I, frankly, unless it hots up because the incumbent, Christine Lagarde, resigns early to become a centre-right candidate for president of France (where she used to be finance minister) after Emmanuel Macron. She has denied that ambition, but watch this space.

Favourite to succeed her at the ECB next year is a Spaniard, Pablo Hernández de Cos from the Bank for International Settlements, ahead of Dutch and German runners. But EU leaders are well capable of dirty tricks in the stables, as happened when the French undermined the Dutch first ECB chief, Wim Duisenberg, in order to replace him with their own Jean-Claude Trichet – though the handover had to be delayed while the latter was cleared of fraud charges.

Meanwhile, central bank watchers must wait a while longer for a competition to succeed Andrew Bailey, who is all but invisible these days as governor of the Bank of England but due to stay in post until March 2028. Among his deputy governors, only Sir Dave Ramsden from the Treasury has any profile outside Threadneedle Street. What price an early Bailey retirement to make way for the Stockport-born ex-Goldman Sachs guru and Burnham adviser Lord (Jim) O’Neill?

Fading exchange

DCC Energy is the fifth FTSE 100 company this year to succumb to a bargain-hunting foreign buyer, following Schroders in fund management, Beazley in insurance, Intertek in inspection services and Segro, the former Slough Estates property group. There have also been half-a-dozen FTSE 250 leavers so far, led by easyJet and Tate & Lyle. Combined with a bare trickle of new listings, the current rate of shrinkage means there could be no London Stock Exchange at all in a generation’s time. I won’t be around to review the restaurant that takes over the LSE’s Paternoster Square premises, but the problem is far more urgent than that. The new City minister, Lucy Rigby, is a competition lawyer who trained at one of London’s still world-class firms, Slaughter and May. What’s her advice on how to make the Square Mile competitive again?

Club class

My Beefeater reward club membership being long out of date (like the steakhouse format itself, created in 1974 to compete against Berni Inns of distant memory), I was late to the news that Whitbread, the FTSE 100 parent company, is about to close all 106 remaining Beefeater outlets, converting some to bedrooms for its Premier Inn chain and shedding 3,800 jobs. Once a great name in brewing, Whitbread will henceforth be a ‘pure-play, higher-margin hotel business’ while its eaterie brands (Brewers Fayre is also doomed) meet a fate driven by changing tastes and hastened by Labour’s NIC raid, minimum wage hikes and the failure to tackle food and energy inflation.

As a nod to that damage, the new Prime Minister’s token 20 per cent cut in business rates for supposedly ‘working-class’ pubs and social clubs but not middle-class restaurants met a cynical response from the trade. ‘Labour’s just taken ten grand off us, now Burnham says be grateful for 20 quid back,’ one Yorkshire publican put it to me. And what defines a social club for this purpose? If the Stubshaw Cross community club in Makerfield qualifies, why not White’s and Boodle’s in St James’s, where business rates are many times higher? They’re just as social – and if the Burnham bonus comes through, they’ll toast him in vintage claret.