THE rich are at it again, whining that they aren’t allowed to be rich enough. Sometimes it’s hard to suppress an inner Robespierre - an implacable French Jacobin buried deep in the psyche who comes roaring to life when Marie Antoinettes start their rapacious bleating. The contemptuous, sneering, screw-you selfishness and shameless greed is intolerable.

We all have dark thoughts. Who wouldn’t feel revolutionary when multimillionaires dare threaten the Government that they’ll abandon Britain and move overseas if the Treasury raises their taxes a little?

The Government tells poor pensioners to freeze this Christmas. Child poverty is a cancer. The NHS is broken. Throughout my entire life, the rich got richer and the poor poorer. Yet these cowardly gluttons would happily see the rest of us continue shouldering pain, as long as their gilded lives stay golden.

Seemingly, a fair rate of capital gains or inheritance tax is enough to turn our oligarchs into refugees. There’s even firms out there helping these people skip their taxes and relocate overseas. Vampires assisting vampires. Gauleiters of greed claim Britain may lose nearly 10,000 multimillionaires this year.

For decades these people had it all: bail-outs, hand-outs. Most were born rich, some made a packet in the Darwinian world our politicians have created to help their pals and donors. Now, when a little heat comes near, they ready to up sticks and run. Who wouldn’t detest such louts?

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I’m guessing that like me most readers are both relatively comfortable financially, but also not so comfortable that money is never a worry. We pay our taxes on time, and it often hurts. Maybe - if you’re self-employed like me - you sometimes think your tax bill is unfair, but we pay it because that’s what good citizens do.

We all probably know someone who’s a bit of a tax-dodger: a slippery type who does cash-in-hand work and cheats the exchequer. What do you think of them? I know a few, and I find them despicable.

So if the odd tradesman, taxi driver, hairdresser or child-minder irks me for not paying their whack, why should I forgive some cosseted, pampered brat in a chauffeur-driven limo? I’d rather storm the Bastille.

On Sunday, The Herald published a lengthy article I’d written about child poverty; about how the state sends debt collectors after poor working families who can’t afford to pay for school meals; about how poverty itself - the simple, cruel twist of fate that means you’re born poor - can see children taken into care: not neglect, not abuse, but poverty.

The day before, front pages read "Rich ready to quit UK over Budget tax threat". We’re told that for multimillionaires Dubai and Switzerland are the favoured locations when it comes to seeking asylum from the persecution of paying tax.

The rich wail about plans to impose VAT on private school fees. One headline read: "We can afford £42k school fees - but ski trips and music lessons are breaking us." Did you feel your inner Robespierre twitch?

There are parents going hungry so their children can eat. Then there are people like that, fretting over whether they can afford new stables at their second home in Tuscany because it will cost a little more to get Tarquin and Anuskha their golden ticket to elite society. They want their children to have everything, while the children of everyone else get nothing.

I make no apology for feeling genuine, potent rage at their affront to decency.

There’s a cadre of spineless snivelling dupes in Britain who - despite not having two bob to rub together - defend this social vandalism. "It’s all the politics of envy," the anonymous online avatars scream.

They live in fantasy-land, dreaming they too can one day be Elon Musk. They won’t. Musk was born rich. For every self-made millionaire, there’s an army of nepo-babies whose only achievement was being born to rich parents.

The average Brit is more likely to be struck by lightning than ever find themselves wondering if they should leave the country because their millions are going to be hit for some more tax. But the fever-dream of unfettered capitalism excels at myth-making.

One headline read We can afford £42k school fees - but ski trips and music lessons are breaking us’ One headline read: "We can afford £42k school fees - but ski trips and music lessons are breaking us" (Image: Getty)

This is what life is like for most Brits: you’re born, you get an education, if you’re very lucky you get a decent job, you work, you buy some stuff that makes working less painful, you get old, you die. Your children then do it all over again. Then they die.

So, we should be in this together, against the millionaire cowards threatening to leave the country we built through that drudgery of work and the trillions in tax we’ve paid over our lifetimes.

If those thousands of multimillionaires leave Britain because they don’t want to pay tax to help our country succeed, then strip them of their citizenship. If you abandon your country, then you aren’t coming back. If you want to carry our passport, pay your taxes. By putting greed over citizenship, by rejecting duty, these people assault our country, and wound us. They stick a knife in Britain.

Decent, fair and equal taxation would change this country overnight. A 1% wealth tax on the assets of the richest 1% would raise £25 billion a year. We could lift our country out of the stagnant, decaying mess it’s in, and rebuild what’s been broken. Or we can lick the boots of a bunch of vipers who couldn’t give a damn about this country, or whether the likes of you or I - or the poorest children in our society - live or die.

So I’m really not calling for tumbrils and tricoteuses in the Place de la Concorde. I’m an old fashioned leftie-liberal pacifist, no matter how angry the greed and selfishness makes me.

But I do want the rich to feel some pain in their wallet. We’ve all felt it. I’ve felt it, of late; you’ve felt it. And we all know there’s people out there who have felt it far worse than us. All I want is the pain to be shared, and the duty of trying to rebuild this nation divided equally amongst us all, whether rich or poor.

So pull your weight, or really do leave this country - and please don’t come back.

Neil Mackay is the Herald’s Writer at Large. He’s a multi-award-winning investigative journalist, author of both fiction and non-fiction, and a filmmaker and broadcaster. He specialises in intelligence, security, crime, social affairs and foreign and domestic politics.