Call me old-fashioned but few things strike me as more compelling evidence of a genuine love for a country than, well, living in it.

Euromillions notwithstanding, I doubt I will ever avail myself of the advantages offered by more “tax-friendly” domains but I do understand their allure: they allow people who love money more than they love living in their own country to emigrate and so keep more of the former than they would otherwise have to pay to help support the latter.

It doesn’t matter that these people already have more money than any human being could conceivably need or that the massive majority of their considerably less well-off employees and customers back “home” will never be able to enjoy similarly self-enriching arrangements.

Which brings us to Sir Jim Ratcliffe. The Brexit-supporting economic migrant and tax exile has recently taken to talking down the UK, spouting spectacular and offensive falsehoods about fellow beneficiaries of immigration (in his case, to Monaco) and generally sounding like the uncle nobody wants to sit next to at Christmas. All when he’s not busy running Ineos, the twelfth largest chemical company in the world, or masterminding Manchester United’s dizzying ascent to twelfth in the Premier League.

Ratcliffe, of course, is as entitled to his opinions as your uncle. What is less obvious, and considerably more worrying, is why his “insights” into anything other than the lucrative benefits of tax exile, purchasing enough........

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