In April, to mark the day on which Americans are expected to file their taxes, the New York mayor, Zohran Mamdani, filmed himself on Billionaires’ Row, an enclave of super-tall apartment buildings just south of Central Park. When he took office, he said, he would tax the rich, and now, outside the hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin’s $238m penthouse, he was ready to make good on his pledge. “Today, we’re taxing the rich,” he said with a flamboyant smile, zooming his face into the camera. It was the opening to a short film unashamedly titled Happy Tax Day, New York.

He went into battle armed with stats. According to Mark Levine, NYC’s comptroller (a senior financial executive), the pied-à-terre tax on second homes will raise about $500m annually fromabout 11,200 properties.

The political theatre with which Mamdani packaged his promise is as eye-catching as the policy itself. The video was clearly shot in the service of an adversarial messaging demonising the rich. It would probably come as a surprise to many people that across the Atlantic, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have been quietly pursuing their own policies targeting the ultra-rich owners of luxury properties, who have driven up the cost of housing in cities and towns across the UK.

As with the pied-à-terre tax, a new tax on second homes and the “mansion tax”, announced in last year’s budget, take particular aim at the most exclusive........

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