What do the rich really think about a wealth tax? Not what you would imagine | Caroline Knowles

When even some of the rich are warming to taxes on wealth, why is the Labour party still reluctant to propose them?

• Caroline Knowles is the author of Serious Money: Walking Plutocratic London

The British public are overwhelmingly in favour of levying wealth taxes on the rich. But how do the rich feel about the prospect? That is harder to discern. Our best guess is perhaps via the experts" who manage wealth and luxury consumption - bankers, tax advisers, lawyers, estate agents, art advisers, yacht brokers and so on. These professions often speak for the rich, presenting them as rational economic actors who protect their money by moving to low-tax countries if pushed, regardless of the social consequences.

But what do the wealthy think? It has become hard to glean what they directly think or feel about anything. Between the spreads in celebrity magazines and the ventriloquising from the wealth management industry, the rich have become caricatures; urban legends rather than real, living people.

Caroline Knowles is global professorial fellow at Queen Mary University of London, and the author of Serious Money: Walking Plutocratic London