Questions in the Guardian we can answer
The Guardian asks us:
Do we really want post-Brexit Britain to be the world’s biggest tax haven?
Yes.
Next question?
Or in more detail, yes we do want tax competition. For it is that very competition, as it is in so many other areas of life, which limits the amount that we the people can get shafted.
We all know very well that a monopoly supplier of beer would be watering that of the workers even as they raised the price. We prosecute people who build cartels for the very same reason - such cooperation between producers means that it is the consumer that is going to get screwed.
Tax competition is exactly the same logic. It's entirely true that there does need to be government - no, we are not anarcho-capitalists around here - and that means there must be tax revenue to pay for it. It is also true that a government is going to be sovereign over its own territory. Which means that the only form of competition we can have here, to protect us against that monopolist problem, is between tax jurisdictions rather than within them.
And thus the joy with which we welcome tax competition and yes, even tax havens. Simply because their existence limits the depredations the governors may make upon the pockets of the populace.
And why shouldn't it be us that leads the world in such matters? We did, after all, rather pioneer these very ideas. Our own Adam Smith leading the way in much of it of course. Starting with that point that it is economic freedom which leads to the enrichment of said populace, competition being the thing which ensures that economic freedom.
We insist that the bakers and then butchers compete for our custom. Why should that not be true of those who would claim to rule us, those who claim to know how our money should be spent? We might even find that leaving it to fructify in the pockets of the populace provides that optimal solution.
Which is exactly why those who would rule us don't desire the system of competition - and thus exactly why we must have it.