Ben Pawlowski
BRITAIN’S richest plumber has revealed he is making a permanent move to the Costa del Sol amid fears of a tax raid on the rich in the Labour government’s upcoming budget.
Charlie Mullins, the founder of Pimlico Plumbers, revealed to The Sunday Times that he has become a resident of Marbella, and plans to return to the UK in September to sell his €12 million apartment which looks over The Shard and London Eye.
“I am taking all my money and investment out of the UK. The government are driving people with money away from the country. Why would people stay in the UK?”, he told the newspaper.
The 71-year-old’s relocation comes amid speculation that Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government will hike capital gains and inheritance tax in the budget on October 30 in a bid to close a €25 billion black hole allegedly left behind by their Tory predecessors.
Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, has admitted that ‘difficult decisions’ lie ahead, and that those with the ‘broadest shoulders’ will have to carry the burden of potential tax rises.
According to independent research, some 9,500 millionaires (out of 2.9 million total) are set to leave the UK this year.
Mullins has owned a home in Marbella for 15 years, and also owns five more properties on the Costa del Sol.
Despite Spain having a lower capital gains tax, Mullins would be liable to paying a 3.5% wealth tax introduced by Pedro Sanchez, the Socialist prime minister, in 2022.
He is also intending to apply for a secondary residence in Dubai – the low-tax haven in the Middle East popular with the super-rich.
Mullins made his money as a plumber in central London, where he grew up – he sold Pimlico Plumbers for €155 million to the private equity company KKR three years ago.
The outspoken Thatcherite voted for Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform party in the 2024 general election, and was recently booted off X, the social media platform, after tweeting that someone should kill the ‘Muslim mayor’ Sadiq Khan.
Mullins’ decision to emigrate was blasted by many, including Giles Coren, the columnist and TV presenter.
Writing in The Times, Coren sarcastically labelled Mullins’ departure as a ‘terrible, terrible shame’, describing him and other wealthy profiteers fleeing the UK as ‘scum’ and ‘the very worst of the worst’.
He wrote: “If there are people here for whom this ancient land is no more than a tax jurisdiction, who would gladly swap it for a new-built, kleptocratic, racist autocracy in the desert, then, frankly, they can clear off out of it”.
Coren, you are so out of touch you’re on your own planet.
Charlie Mullins, good for you man, keep what you worked for, don’t let these leftist arseholes take it !