A lot has been written lately about the group calling themselves the Patriotic Millionaires, particularly their letter signed by around 120 members urging Andy Burnham to introduce a 2% annual wealth tax on assets over £10 million.

The way I see it If they want to hand more of their own money to the Government, that’s entirely their choice. Nobody is stopping them. But demanding that every other successful person does the same is quite another matter.

I’ve paid well over £100 million in tax during my years of doing business in Britain. I don’t object to paying my fair share. What I do object to is watching billions of pounds squandered through waste, incompetence and political vanity.

So, who are this benevolent bunch? The UK branch of the Patriotic Millionaires was established in 2021. Since then, excluding an extraordinary one-off £585 million National Fund transfer, voluntary payments made to HM Treasury and specifically towards reducing the national debt amount to only around £1.2 million, spread across roughly 50 individual contributions.

If this group genuinely believes wealthy people should contribute more to the government’s coffers, and they have been thinking that since at least 2021 where are their voluntary contributions? Calling yourself a ‘patriot’ doesn’t make you one. You get that title from others in honour of good deeds done for the greater good.

In fact, it would take just six people, each worth £20 million, voluntarily giving 1% of their wealth once, to exceed everything voluntarily paid to the Government since the organisation was formed.

A reasonable estimate, based on publicly available information, suggests the combined wealth of those who signed the letter is somewhere between £800 million and £1.2 billion (that’s an average wealth per member of between £6.6 and £10 million). Meaning there is no public evidence that most of those signatories would themselves be liable to pay the tax they are advocating. Some undoubtedly would; many may not. That rather undermines the image of people bravely volunteering to pay more themselves.

Calling for higher taxes on “people like us” carries much less moral force if there is no clear evidence that you would actually be writing the cheque.

Patriotism isn’t demonstrated by signing open letters or demanding that someone else pays more tax. If you genuinely believe the Government deserves more of your money, there is already a mechanism for sending it. It has existed for decades.

The figures suggest remarkably few people have chosen to use it. Perhaps it’s time for the Patriotic Millionaires to lead by example. Because until they do, all this letter-writing looks less like patriotism and more like virtue signalling dressed up as public policy.