Britain’s brain drain was hiding in plain sight, now new emigration data proves it. We have engineered an economy where high earners are taxed punitively while low earners are propped up, says Tom Harwood

We saw it all around us. Friends moving abroad. Colleagues relocating. Dubai, Australia, America calling. This modern phenomenon was there for all with eyes to see. And yet only this week has our official statistics body caught up.

Far from the Office for National Statistics’ previous best guess of just 77,000 British Nationals leaving the country last year, an astonishing data revision reveals that the number of Brits estimated to have upped sticks in 2024 was in fact 234 per cent bigger; 257,000 Brits left the country.

More than a quarter of a million British emigrants. That’s the highest number of Brits leaving since comparable ONS records began in 1964. And yet, strangely, no one appears to be sounding the alarm bells.

Why the sudden jump in this week’s revised numbers? The ONS has belatedly treated us to a new methodology.........

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