As seen in the Times
‘Oh, sod the glass, let’s have a bottle.’ Our lunch at Daphne’s in Chelsea is entering its third hour. The waiter, a real dash, soon reappears, popping the cork of a Perrier-Jouët Belle Époque. Rebecca has been having a terrible time of it recently (her husband, ‘the bastard’, walked in on her bonking his business partner) and I’ll see no expense spared in cheering up an old Somerville gal pal. We gossip, we bitch, we whinge. We have a bloody good time.
But when the bill arrives, the colour drains from my face. ‘It’s 534 quid a head!’ I shriek, launching into a bout of effing and jeffing about bloody Andy Burnham and his tax-mad Chancellor. No doubt about it: the jig’s well and truly up. My lifestyle has not only eaten into my nest egg, but my children Tom and Izzy’s as well. I’d hope to at least leave them the mews flat in South Ken but, judging by the overdraft, that might have to be sold to cover unpaid debts the moment I pop my clogs.
Oh, but what’s this? A notificaysh pops up on my phone. ‘Kemi Badenoch pledges to abolish inheritance tax on family homes.’
Yippee! I hop up and did a little dance. Sweet deliverance. ‘I could kiss you Kemi, I could kiss you!’ Andmuch more besides. After years of rapacious Maoism, we in Middle England finally have our champion. A woman with the balls to say the children of the wealthy should not be troubled with nasty little taxes, particularly when there are millions of perfectly healthy worthless incels playing their video games who could be giving 50 per cent of their income to the Exchequer.
Unlike those whingeing Gen Zs, I actually earned my money in the proper way and I’ll be damned if the state takes it when I’m gone. Fresh out of Oxford, Desmond in hand, I was hired on the milk round by an advertising firm, which came with a massive eff-off expenses account. I soon bought my first flat – a pokey little fixer-upper in Holland Park – with Simon for £5,000, after which I was asked to write this lifestyle column. After a few years of doing that, I became known as a ‘national treasure’ and so invites to do corporate speaking gigs and shows for the BBC started to come in. I became a regular panellist on Moral Maze, where I mostly talked about why people like me should be able to do whatever they want, all the time, with no consequences whatsoever.
We barely noticed it, what with the dizzying carousel of dinners and expensed trips abroad, but the housing market was going absolutely gangbusters. So, thanks to our savvy investing, that five-grand initial purchase had ended in a £4 million townhouse in Canonbury.
My lifestyle has not only eaten into my nest egg, but my children’s as well
All this to say that we earned every sodding penny. And now our two children are getting it, the lot. Tom and Izzy should be allowed to discuss Formula 1, drink Aperol spritz and preface every sentence with ‘to be fair’ in complete luxury and security for the rest of their lives, serene in the knowledge that, whatever happens, they have the backstop of a substantial property portfolio to bail them out. And I don’t care how many income tax increases it takes. Mummy’s little darlings will live well – matron Kemi will see to it.
It is unjustifiable that all these Pip claimants get money for doing nothing when my children might have to lose their money through inheritance taxes. So, if you’re reading this and you’re under the age of 40, get cracking. Tom has always wanted to quit his tech sales job and do his scuba-diving qualification in Thailand and Izzy wants to open a jewellery boutique in Notting Hill, which will inevitably lose horrendous amounts of money. So hop on your bike. You’ve a dynasty to pay for.
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