For all its “rabble-rousing” flourishes, Nigel Farage’s speech showed he understands that the City isn’t a London vanity project, it’s the bedrock of the entire UK economy, says Matthew Bowles

Britain’s economic situation is hard to sugar-coat. Taxation is at some of the highest levels since Attlee’s day, and parts of the British economy are locked into a productivity death-spiral, particularly our sprawling, debt-crippled public sector. Against that grim backdrop, Nigel Farage’s press conference focused on the people who might be able to get Britain out of this mess: business, entrepreneurs and wealth creators. One emphasis was on the UK’s most important industry – financial services – and on creating conditions in which the country’s wealth creators can thrive again.

Farage outlined how the UK’s growth crisis cannot be fixed without reviving the City. It was a simple pitch: if the government keeps punishing capital, talent and enterprise, Britain’s stagnation will worsen. He leant on analysis from Capital Economics, which shows Rachel Reeves is raising taxes at the fastest pace of any Chancellor since the 1970s, a shift that’s already driven investors and entrepreneurs abroad. Current estimates indicate that 16,500 millionaires will have left Britain this calendar year, roughly one every 45 minutes since Labour took power.

The data underlines why this matters. The financial and related professional services sector contributed around

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