What would we do without Tracey Emin, who doesn't like paying tax?

Hung be the heav’ns with black, yield day to night! Ms Tracey Emin, that modern equivalent of Constable, Gainsborough and Turner, has proclaimed that she is thinking of leaving Britain, saying that she “is simply not willing to pay tax at 50 per cent,” and that the UK doesn’t have enough tax breaks and other freebies for artists. What on earth will we do without her? Mr Cameron, Mr Osborne, this is surely the clinching argument!

An extra ten percent on whatever Ms Emin makes out of her, well, let’s call it “art” for the sake of politeness, over and above £150,000 a year doesn’t sound like sufficient cause to make one abjure the realm unless one had other reasons for doing so. And what exactly is her leverage? Even socialists have always understood that if large-scale industries are driven away by excessive tax rates then working people will lose their jobs. It may be blackmail, but we have no choice. I hardly think this argument applies to the world of celebrity art (motto: It’s art because it’s ME!) So what we are left with is a hissy fit, hardly front-page news in either the “art” or the art world.

Let me remind Ms Emin and other cry-babies that, in Mrs Thatcher’s first two terms, when according to one narrative the foundations of recovery were laid, the top tax rate held firm at 60 per cent. Only in 1988, by which time even many Tories agreed she was losing the plot, was the bold step of reduction to 40 per cent taken, and it led immediately to a consumer boom, 15 per cent interest rates to damp that down, and a boom-bust cycle in housing from which we still haven’t recovered. Yes, many profited hugely, but an awful lot more didn’t, which in a democracy may not be entirely without effect. Up here in the North-West you don’t meet many people who have reason to sympathise with Tracey Emin, and I imagine it’s similar in her home town of Margate. It’s often said that there are only two unavoidables in life: death and taxes. It’s considered undignified to whinge endlessly about the former; what’s so different about the latter?

So to everyone who’s stomping around making similar threats: it’s your decision, and please close the door quietly behind you. And don’t come back. The rest of us will manage somehow; I think you’ll find we’re intensely relaxed about people getting a little less filthy rich.