Sunday Times rich list: “Astonishing year” for Britain’s most wealthy
Jordan Shilton ■ The annual rich list published by the Sunday Times has revealed a staggering rise in wealth for Britain’s super-rich. || The headline story, made public a week prior to the release of the list on May 18, was that the number of billionaires in Britain had surpassed 100 for the first time. With a total of 104 billionaires, Britain has witnessed the emergence of more than 20 new billionaires over the past year and has the highest concentration of billionaires of any country. In its entirety, the list reveals that the richest 1,000 people in Britain possess combined wealth of £519 billion, equivalent to a staggering one third of the country’s GDP. This is a rise of 15.4 percent from the 2013 list, when the super-rich held total wealth of £449 billion. Since 2008, the year of the global financial crisis and the implementation of a multi-billion-pound bailout of the banks, the wealth of the super-rich in the UK has doubled. As well as being the product of speculation and outright criminality, the rapid rise of such obscene levels of wealth over the past five years confirms the true purpose of the austerity policies of successive governments since the financial crisis.