Talent and capital are fleeing Britain so fast that the Labour Government is announcing sanctions against Israel. Rokos Capital founder Chris Rokos, reportedly the third-largest taxpayer in the U.K., is leaving Britain for Greece, Bloomberg News reported. Other billionaires who have left the U.K. recently amid government plans for tax increases include Lakshmi Mittal, Sharvin Bharti Mittal, Guillaume Pousaz, Nassef Sawiris, John Fredriksen, and Michael Platt.

Platt, who left for Switzerland and the UAE, declared, the U.K. is no longer a serious contender as a jurisdiction in which to do business. Fredriksen, who decamped to Cyprus and the UAE, was blunter still, saying Britain has gone to hell.

The bond market views British long-term debt as increasingly risky, sending long-term government borrowing costs soaring to the highest levels since 1998, nearly 6 percent for the 30-year gilt.

The news about Rokos means that four of the five originally London-based founders of the asset management firm Brevan Howard will have left. The firm was named for Jean-Philippe Blochet, Rokos, James Vernon, Trifon Natsis, and Alan Howard. Howard and Blochet moved to Geneva, and Natsis reportedly relocated to Abu Dhabi.

A Distraction Dressed as Foreign Policy

Instead of focusing on stanching what Bloomberg describes as a “wealth exodus,” British politicians are behaving as though their country still holds colonial-era authority over territories it administered after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband rolled out a new package of sanctions, including a ban on British arms sales and other exports said to “materially contribute to the occupation.”

Miliband also announced an import ban on goods from Jewish communities in the West Bank, while defining “the occupation as a whole” — which by his framing includes Jews living in Jerusalem and its suburbs — as unlawful. He further pledged action against companies and individuals providing construction, infrastructure, financing, or real estate services connected to those communities.

Critics call that framing disingenuous: many companies and organizations make no distinction between Israeli Jews depending on which side of the pre-1967 line they happen to live. While many Israelis remain open to eventual Palestinian self-governance in parts of the West Bank — already substantially the case under the Palestinian Authority — the prospect of a Gaza-style, militant-dominated state on Israel’s border strikes most Israelis as untenable.

Britain assembled a coalition of Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden to back the measures singling out goods and services tied to Israeli Jewish communities — a move commentators have likened to earlier eras of boycotting Jewish commerce. Germany notably declined to join. Miliband, presenting the sanctions, described himself as a “proud British Jew,” though in a 2014 interview he had called himself a “Jewish atheist,” saying, “I don’t believe in God.”

Backlash From Britain’s Chief Rabbi

Mirvis warned that the cumulative effect of such punitive policies is to embolden those, at home and abroad, who use hatred as a weapon against Jews — and noted the timing fell on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

Israel Responds

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced that Israel would close the British consulate in Jerusalem, expel some British representatives, and bar the entry of others. “The message to any government that harms us is clear,” Sa’ar said. “Whoever acts against Israel — Israel will act against him, and he will lose his influence and relevance in the region.”

Sa’ar also said he had spoken with British opposition leaders Kemi Badenoch and Tom Tugendhat, thanking them for their firm opposition to the Labour government’s announcement.

Timing, and a Convenient Scapegoat

Mirvis noted the sanctions landed on the eve of Rosh Hashanah. It is also the week of the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks — attacks rooted in a radical ideology aimed at expelling non-Muslims from Muslim lands, an impulse not unrelated to efforts aimed at Jewish presence in the land of Israel.

Fewer than half of people in England and Wales identified as Christian in the 2021 census, and the New York Times has reported on plans to repurpose tens of thousands of churches across Western Europe as their societies’ connection to Christianity continues to wane.

But the most relevant timing may be domestic. Observers point to the Labour Party’s need for a scapegoat — an outward-facing controversy to distract from class-warfare tax and regulatory policies that are driving successful individuals and job creators abroad. In its loss of talent and capital, the moment carries echoes of the Great Puritan Migration, which in time contributed to the American Revolution and the rise of the United States as the global power that would eventually eclipse Britain.