Nigel Farage wants to sell the right to permanently live in Britain to any foreigner with deep enough pockets.
Nigel and the rest of Reform UK were doubtless inspired by Donald Trump’s ridiculous $5,000,000 “gold card” scheme to grand any foreigner with deep enough pockets the right to live permanently in the United States. Nigel appears cheaper than the American president, though. Reform UK has proposed that the “Britannia Card” cost just £250,000 (about 343,000 USD at time of writing)) and grant the right of residence in Britain to anyone who purchases the card. Farage claims this will bring the wealthy back to Britain and result in an increase in the tax take by the Exchequer.
Greater detail for the proposal was delivered by former Reform UK chairmen and now head of UK DOGE Muhammad Ziauddin (Zia) Yusuf).
He began his statement by accurately stating that “For centuries Britain led the world.” He then went wildly off the rails of reality by adding that “It (Britain) was a powerhouse that was a magnet for economic talent and treasure.” This second statement is bizarre to say the least. In 1951 Britain was 99.83% Western/White/European in origin, the same 1961.
In 1966 the government estimated that fewer than 600,000 immigrants lived in the United Kingdom and that 98.04% of the population was of native British stock and birth. Britain was made rich because native Britons build the largest, grandest, most charitable, and most prosperous empire the world has ever known. I state again that Britain became so rich and grand because of native Britons not because of mass immigration that has turned our towns and cities into foreign encampments within our own isles.
For the cost of the £250,000 “Britannia Card” new foreign residents in the United Kingdom will be exempt from taxation upon foreign incomes and wealth inherited from foreign sources. Zia then goes on to say that at the end of each fiscal year any earnings from the £250,000 fees for new migrants will be pooled and then distributed to 2.5 million low-income full time working Britons. Zia cites his own mother, a full time working nurse, as an example of someone who may benefit from this redistribution. It appears to be entirely lost on Mr. Yusuf that perhaps the mother of a man with tens of millions of pounds in wealth is perhaps not the best example. Furthermore, many of those 2.5 million people will be other immigrants and the children of immigrants, not native Britons. If NHS nurses are a standard class of people eligible for this benefit then the 30% of NHS nurses who are of foreign extraction will benefit significantly and take potential redistributions that might otherwise go to native Brits. This is not even the major issue, though.
The significant issue is the overall demographic composition of the United Kingdom. Brits are rapidly being reduced to minority status in our own country and this “Britannia Card” policy would serve to speed up that process. In India alone 14.4 million people reside in the top 1% of earners and if just 25% of those decided to buy a child or spouse access to the United Kingdom then another 3.6 million immigrants might buy their way into the United Kingdom. There are 6.2 million millionaires in China, 10.75 million in the Asia-Pacific, 16.7 million in continental Europe, 915,000 in Latin America, 352,000 in Africa and 26.8 million in North America. If just 10% of all of these millionaires decided to purchase a “Britannia Card” it would mean another 6.2 million potential immigrants to the United Kingdom, and this is not counting the family reunification that might take place.
The only thing the “Britannia Card” will bring about is the further dissolution of Britain and another decade of mass immigration fueled by corporate greed and elite disregard for the national interest of the British nation(s).
Throughout the announcement both Yusuf and Farage claimed that this would be a “wealth transfer” (of a voluntary sort!) from the internationally wealthy to the average working Britain. I’ve already made clear that this would not be the case as many of the people who Reform UK have admitted would receive the money are themselves immigrants who displace native Britons. There is a deeper issue, however. Simply giving a small section of the British population an annual pittance will not resolve the deeper structural issues of this country.
If Reform UK want to drive wealth creation and growth they need to invest in the native British through structural reform and not via wealth transfers from radical schemes that will continue to allow in masses of new immigrants.
Right now the wealthy can buy their children into the best schools in this country by purchasing homes around the few remaining grammar schools. This must change. Reform UK could build hundreds and thousands of new grammar schools across this country to capture the most talented children of Britain’s working class and turn them into highly educated members of society. Reform UK could lift the caps that limit the number of British medical school attendees and move to ban foreigner only medical courses. Reform UK might prioritise the educational attainment of native British boys who are the worst performers in our schools and more than anything else Reform UK might actually put an end to the mass immigration that is driving up housing costs, displacing native Britons, taking our jobs, filling our schools and hospitals with strangers, and resulting in a country of strangers.
More immigration will not solve the state’s fiscal or social ills, only remigration will do that.