I'm taking my boats to another pond!

I wonder if the BATNA (best alternative to negotiated agreement) blackmail tactic from non-doms that they will leave the UK if the government's tax plans are implemented (apparently Greek shipping families are the latest to threaten to take their toys elsewere) is not having quite the desired impact on the government.  Maybe (insert appropriate cliched adjective - dour, son of the manse, puritan) Gordon Brown and any residual socialist feeling in the Cabinet means that they would quite welcome the departure of conspicuously consuming, property price inflating squillionaires.  There is no doubt that the non-doms have pushed the top end of the London property market to weird levels (and as one Old Money Brit living in Holland Park described to me, spending money in mind boggling ways - digging below their Regency houses to build cinemas and swimming pools) which has an unhelpful knock on effect (a 1 bedroom flat in the East End that I bought as a first time buyer in 1988 for £60,000, at the height of that property boom apparently sold for £285,000 last year).  And this and the flash spending (see the Financial Times, How to Spend It magazine for inexplicably award winning stomach churning silliness) surely has a divisive effect on society.   I know it's not very New Labour to be against wealth creation, and Gordon Brown has apparently managed to say New Labour without washing his mouth out afterwards at a Cabinet meeting... but...