Britain must call its exiles home

Last week, billionaire Ben Delo broke the news that, due to Labour’s newly announced cap on foreign donations to political parties, he would be returning to the United Kingdom from Hong Kong to support Reform. These limitations, seemingly put in place to thwart Christopher Harborne’s support for Reform from Thailand, have been surmounted by Delo, but they could still potentially apply to other wealthy expats who have been driven out of the country. This growing cohort of financially well-off but otherwise fed-up exiles now represents a standing threat to the government that chased them out: they can finance their own return from Elba or the Emirates, wherever they’ve ended up.

This treasury–in–exile is shockingly large. Reports indicate that 16,500 high-net-worth (HNW) individuals left the United Kingdom in 2025. Combined with the roughly 10,800 who left in 2024, Keir Starmer has presided over the steepest two-year capital outflow ever recorded for any single country. This represents a loss of roughly £66 billion in liquid assets, to say nothing of the people who make the creation of that capital possible in the first place. To be fair to the Prime Minister, while Labour’s capital gains hike and inheritance tax changes have made a bad situation worse, the Tories’ closure of the Investor Visa and sloppy overhaul of the non-dom regime started some of the exodus. Both parties have chased Britain’s most productive people off the island while simultaneously increasing the net drain on the systems they will no longer be paying into. 

Unfortunately for anyone committed to sticking it out for the next few years, Labour seem to have all but abandoned hope of hanging on to lingering British dynamism. OpenAI recently announced that it would abandon its UK Stargate data centre plans, citing the exorbitant costs of energy and the maddening bureaucratic maze that stands in the way of building anything in Britain. While their competitor, Anthropic, seems open to Starmer’s suggestions to scale up its London presence, this has less to do with British competitiveness and more to do with the American Department of War’s combativeness. Meanwhile, Skycutter, a domestic drone manufacturer, can’t seem to get a callback, and may now have to painfully decamp to America just to keep flying. As their operations director, Vince Gardner told the BBC, “We want to stay here, this is our home, this is where we’ve developed this technology. We don’t want to leave but the opportunities [in the US] are too great to turn down currently.” It’s not entirely obvious why, despite promised government support, the opportunities for a drone manufacturer would be on the other side of the Atlantic from Ukraine, unless, as Gardner says, any promised support simply seems slower than moving an entire company out of the country.

Once caught, capital has to be kept, and cultural appeals alone, strong as they are, won’t do it

It’s safe to assume that at least a few of those like Gardner, who have either already left or are considering leaving, will consider coming back permanently once some of the anger and new-home appeal begins to fade. Moving a company is one thing; moving all your family and friends is something else. It’s extremely difficult to imagine large swathes of people permanently decamping to the sand and shopping malls of Dubai for any extended period. But while Reform can easily pitch prospective returnees on home and heritage, it will all be for nought without a fundamental change in the economy’s direction. 

Once caught, capital has to be kept, and cultural appeals alone, strong as they are, won’t do it. That means capital gains treatment that doesn’t punish founders for building in Britain, energy prices that don’t chase away every company that needs to plug something in, and a planning system that lets them actually break ground when they get here. The best way for a government in waiting to attract the investor class is to show them, now, in opposition, that they will have somewhere dynamic to put their money. This should not be left till after the election but should be laid out in published plans that capital markets can price in long before the keys to No. 10 change hands. Many of America’s hottest hardware and software companies, like Anduril and Palantir, already have significant operations in the UK, and making it easier for them to expand operations across Europe while snatching up more of the top-tier talent coming out of British universities would win a lot of favour.

But this is not just an angle for attracting the same sort of American tech talent and capital that catapulted the Republicans back into power. While much of the standard framing around this issue focuses on winning back British expats, being the head of the Commonwealth and adjacent to Europe also presents unique opportunities. Britain might be leading the way in wealth emigration, but it’s also occurring in countries such as Canada, France, Germany, Spain, and South Africa. Even in America, capital is changing its domestic distribution, and increasingly, a new class of founders is actively mobile and open to non-US bases. At the moment, the standout net gainer outside of the usual tax havens is Australia, which has managed to attract a new influx of HNW migration through effective policy. Much like the Brexit focus on the Australian points system to limit immigration, Reform can and should seek to emulate their National Innovation and Global Talent visas to increase valuable immigration. While British beaches might not be as pleasant as the sands near Brisbane, it’s safe to assume that, on top of shared assets like common law and an English-speaking population, unique selling points like European access and easier time-zone access to North America would make the United Kingdom highly competitive. And while some Canadians might choose to stay closer to home, Britain could still bring in massive amounts of talent from Europe, who would like some of the American-style dynamism without the long international flights and American-style everything else.

Reform should do everything in its power to attract as many of these individuals as possible

Neither Labour nor the Tories have shown much urgency in fixing the emigration problem, let alone in attracting valuable immigration. Reform could capitalise on this. By making it a top priority to support critical British businesses in tech, defence, energy, and manufacturing, they could likely convince companies like Skycutter to not only stay but also support them over the next few years. For international business, serious policy plans focused on cutting back taxes and red tape, while increasing the type of government support Starmer is already promising to companies like Anthropic, will attract interest. Capital at this level moves slowly, but there is enough time before the general election for a forward-thinking party to garner support, sketch out plans, and ensure enough incoming economic activity to prevent another Truss-style shock. Having new money and new opportunities ready to flood in will prevent panic when the necessary tax cuts are implemented.

This new capital is already on the move and looking for a home. For some, it’s economic reasons — for others, political and cultural. But all of them are open to being sold on a solid spot to land. Beyond their existing economic assets, these are also the types of individuals who will move in search of a better opportunity and who are motivated to ensure that wherever they end up does not go in the same direction as where they are leaving. Reform should do everything in its power to attract as many of these individuals as possible and leverage their talents to ensure both electoral victory and subsequent political success. This might mean dedicated outreach in key areas of both immigration and emigration, internationally focused ad campaigns on British potential, public conversations with founders and businessmen about their needs and concerns, and dramatic new policy proposals blasted across the entire English-speaking internet. But above all, what it will take is continued appeals to already-decamped countrymen that there is still something worth coming back for, something to win.