Take Back Power is a nonviolent civil resistance group in the UK. We aim to put the 99% in charge through citizen’s assemblies. We are ordinary people from all walks of life who believe that in order to fix Britain, taxing the rich is an essential first step, and we want ordinary people to decide how.
Take Back Power is demanding that the UK government institutes a ‘House of the People’ with powers to tax the super-rich, in order to fix Britain.
This would be a permanent rolling assembly that would replace the House of Lords as the UK’s upper legislative chamber.
What this means is that a representative sample of the UK population would be chosen by democratic lottery- a bit like how a jury works. A process called sortition would be used to ensure that this group would be truly representative of the whole UK population, on things like location, gender, race, education and income etc.
The assembly would be renewed over time with members serving for a fixed period, and they would be appropriately compensated for their involvement, covered by rights similar to those such as parental leave and jury duty, to ensure minimum disruption on their returning to work.
To avoid corruption and being sucked into the power games of Westminster, members of the House of the People could serve for a maximum of two years, with no possibility of a second term.
A second chamber with between 325 and 450 members would be large enough to broadly represent the UK population, while being approximately half the size of the current House of Lords.
The House of the People would decide on the key measures to address inequality, including a fairer tax system before examining problems across all other areas of society.
This assembly would hear experts on inequality and taxation, and then they would agree on a set of recommendations that serves everyone, not just a privileged few. These recommendations would be legally binding. The government is required, when they meet our demand, to bring the results of the assembly to Parliament, to be made law.
Public trust in ordinary citizens far outweighs trust in politicians, and we know from the wealth of citizens’ assemblies that have been held around the world, that diverse, representative groups of people, after listening to a range of testimony from specialists, make sensible and fair decisions together.
This is not a new idea, the ancient Greeks chose eligible male citizens via random selection to sit on legislative panels, because they knew careerist politicians are ultimately self-serving. Modern assemblies chosen by sortition have been shown to be highly effective at resolving difficult problems, such as with the abortion ban in Ireland.
In 2025, a movement of community groups arranged the first sitting of the House of the People in the UK. For three days, a true cross-section of the public listened to experts and the voices of thousands of local people. Together they produced a People’s Charter, a detailed plan for what to do in the face of climate breakdown, deep unfairness in our economy, unjust wars and broken politics. It can be read in full here.
In short: No.
Income tax in the UK has become less progressive over time. In 1979 the top rate of income tax was 83%, now it’s 45%.
In addition we tax income from work more heavily than income from capital gains, dividends, or property portfolios. This is important because the rich tend to get a higher proportion of their income from these sources of wealth. As a result, since 2011, the poorest 10% of households have paid a combined tax rate of 44% on their income and wealth gains, whilst the richest paid 22%.
Plus, the rich have ways of minimising how much tax they pay that aren’t open to the rest of us and there is an army of financial advisors and accountants to help them. For example, one in 7 UK billionaires is resident in a tax haven and so contribute little or nothing to UK tax revenues despite making their money here.
Over 1 in 4 billionaires get some or all of their wealth through passive sources like property and inheritance which add nothing to the UK’s productive capacity. These sources of wealth have grown dramatically since the 2008 financial crash, reflecting the UK’s never ending housing crisis.
The result is that the wealth of the super rich has spiralled out of control. Since 2008, the wealth of the UK’s richest individuals has increased four times faster than average UK household wealth. But only four of the top 20 richest people are among the UK’s biggest taxpayers.
If the wealth of the super rich continues to grow at this rate, by 2035 the wealth of the richest 200 families will be larger than the whole UK GDP.
Our focus is on the very top of the wealth distribution – the obscenely rich. We’re not talking about moderately wealthy people here, we are talking about millionaires and billionaires.
In 2024, the richest 50 families had more wealth than the poorest half of the population, comprising more than 34 million people. However, this is very likely to understate the true wealth of the very richest as wealthy people tend not to respond to surveys.
The UK has 156 billionaires, who have a combined wealth of £772.8 billion. We could take away 75% of that wealth and still leave the UK with 156 billionaires.
For context an average UK worker would have to work for 27,000 years to earn a billion pounds (UK average salary is £37k). 27,000 years ago we were in the middle of an ice age, whilst mammoths walked the earth. The pyramids of Giza wouldn’t be built for another 20,000 years.
More than 1 in 5 people in the UK (14.3 million) were living in poverty in 2022/23 including 4.3 million (3 in 10) children, and more than a third of us now earn less than we need to buy life’s essentials, including 50% of children.
Around 3.8 million people experienced destitution in 2022 (where they could not afford to meet their most basic physical needs to stay warm, dry, clean and fed). Including one million children. These figures have more than doubled since 2017. The number of homeless children is at record high and the number of children living in temporary accommodation went up by 7.5% in the year to June 2025 – enough to fill Wembley Stadium two times over.
In the last 4 decades, the UK economy has consistently funnelled wealth upwards to the very wealthy, to the detriment of the rest of us. The UK pay gap between the bosses of the biggest companies and their employees has exploded. The average FTSE Chief Executive is now paid 122 times the salary of an average full time worker.
Unequal societies are also more vulnerable to shocks, and more likely to suffer political instability. The International Monetary Fund identified inequality and weaker unions as leading factors in the 2008 crash.
There are many tax experts and multiple existing proposals for increased taxes on the wealthy. Take Back Power will not take a view on which would be the fairest or most effective solution. We would like to see the House of the People appropriately briefed by experts and given the tools to come to a conclusion that works for the benefit of all of us.
Taxing wealth is not a silver bullet for the problems that we face, but could provide a much needed injection of cash to help lift children out of poverty, end homelessness, reduce carbon emissions and mend our failing public services. The issue at stake is that our entire economic and political system serves as a funnel to allow the super rich to hoover up the nation’s wealth. Fixing Britain will require a radical redesign of rules and incentives to ensure everyone has enough to live in comfort, safety, and happiness, while addressing the multiple crises we face.
That would be for the House of the People to decide, but a few suggestions might be to sort out the NHS and save it from those trying to flog it off to private insurance companies. Or perhaps insulate Britain’s cold and drafty homes, slashing emissions in the process. Or maybe give people free public transport, that would improve our standard of living and increase everyone’s productivity.
Nobody likes disruption, least of all the people disrupting, however history shows us that disruption is a necessary part of social change. Disruptive direct action brought us livable working conditions, the weekend, universal suffrage, and civil rights for marginalised communities. More recently, it saw the demand of Just Stop Oil become government policy. The evidence is clear that though people may not like the messenger, or the method of delivery, they hear the message. Ultimately this leads to political pressure and eventual social change. You can read more about how this works here.
Absolutely! You can pimp your bookshelf or overload your ‘TBP’ list here.
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