fleeing

BRITS will soon feel the squeeze after the announcement of the Budget.

Yesterday Rachel Reeves announced plans for multiple price hikes in the UK from a rise in tax on alcohol and cigarettes to the rising cost of Air Passenger Duty.

The Chancellor, on November 26, unveiled a raft of tax rises including that on booze.

It will see some fan-favourite tipples face a rise in price at the supermarket from a four pack of lager to gin and whiskey – and there are fears this will impact pubs too.

The cost of cigarettes has risen from the average price (for a 20 pack) around £16.78 up to £17.74.

And in 2027, the government will increase all rates of Air Passenger Duty (APD) in line with the rate of inflation – which will make going abroad more expensive.

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So if you quite rightly are looking for an affordable break where alcohol and a box of cigarettes is dirt cheap – not to mention getting out of the country, then here are some options for you.

Bulgaria

Under four hours from the UK is Bulgaria known for its sunny beach resorts with cheap booze and all-inclusive hotels

One unbeatable place for that is Sunny Beach on the Black Sea coast which is well-known for being cheap and cheerful.

On the Beach has offers for a 7-night stay from June 2, 2026, at Sunny Day Club for just £265pp including flights from Manchester on a bed and breakfast basis.

Eating out won’t break the bank if you head away from the main streets – a mid-range meal for two can cost as little as £10 each.

And if you’re a smoker, then Bulgaria is a great place to buy cigarettes – and again, the cheapest.

The retail price for a pack of 20 cigarettes in Bulgaria according to Statista is €3.69 (£3.23).

If you’d prefer a break right now, then check out Bansko which is two hours from the capital of Sofia and is one of the cheapest places in Europe for a pint.

Experts at hoppa recently analysed dozens of European locations to find the most budget-friendly depending on factors like cost of a hotel and the cost of beer.

Here you can pick up a pint for as little as 90p – and a stay in a 3-star hotel which averages out at £57.

If you’re looking for a last-minute winter ski holiday, it’s also one of the most affordable options.

Bansko came third cheapest in the Post Office Travel Money Ski Report 2025.

Sun Travel found a five-night stay for two people from £209pp, which includes flights from London Stansted with LoveHolidays.

Starting on December 7, 2025, you can stay in the three-star Apart Hotel Dream at the foot of the Pirin Mountain, and it’s just 5 minutes from the cable lift.

There’s an indoor pool as well as a restaurant, coffee shop and a cosy lobby bar set by a log fire.

Poland

Second on the list for the cheapest place to buy cigarettes is Poland where a pack of 20 costs on average €4.88 (£4.28).

If you’re looking to get away just for the weekend, then head to Poznan in Poland.

The fifth largest city in Poland, is great for autumn and winter weekend breaks especially if you are on a budget

Beer is cheap, costing around £2.87 a pint for a local brew while coffee is less than £2.80.

Of course you can always make a week out of it – LoveHolidays has an offer for a seven-night stay at Campanile from December 5, 2025, from £199pp including flights from Bristol.

Over the week, that works out at just £28.43 per person per day.

Latvia

While it might not be a place that comes to your mind when scrolling through holidays, Latvia has some crackingly cheap deals.

If you fancy a break in the New Year, then you can go with LoveHolidays to Riga from London Stansted from £22.71pppn – including flights.

Stay in The Dodo in Riga for seven nights from December 6; it’s a budget-friendly hotel but still has free Wi-Fi, comfy beds, private bathrooms, TV, bars, and breakfast options.

Not to mention when you get there it won’t cost you much either – Riga was named Europe’s best value city for a short break by  Post Office Travel Money City Costs Barometer.

On average, a cup of coffee in Riga costs £2.80 and beer costs £3.50, although you can buy beer for as little as €1 (88p) from supermarkets.

Return airport or bus transfers were relatively cheap, costing £3.50 on average.

Turkey

For the sun-seekers amongst you then of course, Turkey is an easy win.

From Antalya to Istanbul, there are plenty of options – Marmaris is ranked as the cheapest coastal resort, offering low prices for a basket of tourist goods

And if you want to plan a getaway this December, you can still enjoy highs of 17C.

With LastMinute.com, you can enjoy five-night stay at the Hotel Unver in Marmaris from £127pp including flights from London Stansted.

The hotel has a swimming pool, free Wi-Fi and is just a few streets away from the beach.

Mains at a restaurant in Marmaris cost around 400 Turkish Lira (TL) in
£7.12 – and a cup of Turkish coffee in Marmaris can cost anywhere from  Turkish Lira (12p).

And even if you fancy a hot summer in Turkey – you can still get great deals now like at the Belpoint Beach Hotel in Antalya.

With LoveHolidays there’s a deal for a 7-night all-inclusive break from £239pp including flights from London Stansted on June 11, 2026.

The three-star hotel has an outdoor swimming pool with an aquapark, restaurants and bars.

Spain

You can always trust Spain to deliver and to make matters even better you can be there in two hours.

The average price of a pack of 20 cigarettes is €5.99 (£5.24), and as for alcohol a pint of domestic beer can be as little as €3 (£2.63).

Costa del Sol, region in the south of Spain, is regarded as one of the cheapest places for a holiday.

Another popular destination is the city of Malaga – with LoveHolidays you can book a stay at Easyhotel Malaga City Centre from £199pp.

If you want a break in January, it’s a great choice for sightseeing, and enjoying the cheap meals and drinks Spain has to offer.

You can fly there from London Luton on January 7, 2026 and stay for seven nights.

Or if you fancy somewhere coastal and some sun, you can stay at the cosy Marissal by Dorobe Hotels with LoveHolidays – a two-star boutique hotel with just 23 rooms – and it’s two minutes from the beach.

A seven-night stay from June 12, 2026 will set you back just £259pp including direct flights to Malaga from London Gatwick.

For more budget spots, check out these winter sun destinations from your nearest airport – with 7-night holidays to Turkey, Tunisia and Spain.

And hear from one man who travels to Spain every month – 12 stunning and cheap destinations Spaniards love that Brits have never heard of.

Here’s the destination where you don’t have to pay tax at duty free…

Gibraltar, the Mediterranean destination south of Spain, is the perfect place for Brits to stock up on alcohol, bag a cheap perfume and a designer handbag.

The duty free is especially low because of Gibraltar’s tax policies, specifically the absence of VAT and excise taxes.

Sun writer Adele Cooke is half Gibraltarian and reveals she often sees hordes of tourists descend on the airport to get their goods.

She told us: “Often you’ll see people on cruise ships all get off to stock up on the goods. My dad likes to stock up his alcohol trolley while we’re there too.”

When it comes to alcohol, Gibraltar has some great offers at duty-free – for example, you can pick up a litre of The Famous Grouse whisky for as little as £8.15.

A litre of Bacardi starts at £10.75 (£20 in the UK) and Captain Morgan rum at £11 (also £20 in the UK).

One litre of Jägermeister costs just £12.50 (£25 in the UK), the duty-free shop even sells one litre bottles of Glen’s Vodka for £3.40 (£17 in the UK).

Humanitarian group says at least 400 children reached Tawila without their parents after Rapid Support Forces’ advance.

Hundreds of Sudanese children have arrived in the town of Tawila in Sudan’s western Darfur region without their parents since the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) seized control of the city of el-Fasher last month, a humanitarian group says.

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said on Thursday that at least 400 unaccompanied children had arrived in Tawila but that the real number was likely much higher.

“Children are reaching Tawila exhausted and deeply distressed, often after days of walking through the desert,” the group said.

“Many arrive terrified of the armed groups they fled from or might have encountered on the road. Many became separated from their parents during the chaos of flight, while others’ parents are believed to have gone missing, been detained or killed.”

The RSF seized control of el-Fasher – the capital of Sudan’s North Darfur state – on October 26 after an 18-month siege that cut residents off from food, medicine and other critical supplies.

The paramilitary group, which has been battling the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) for control of Sudan since April 2023, has been accused of committing mass killings, kidnappings and widespread acts of sexual violence in its takeover of the city.

The RSF has denied targeting civilians or blocking aid, saying such activities are due to rogue actors.

But United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk said in mid-November that the “atrocities” that have unfolded in el-Fasher “constitute the gravest of crimes”.

More than 100,000 people have fled el-Fasher since the RSF’s takeover last month, according to the latest figures from the UN, with many seeking refuge in nearby Chad.

Meanwhile, the NRC said on Thursday that it had registered at least 15,000 new arrivals in Tawila, about 60km (37 miles) from el-Fasher, since October 26. More than 200 children are being registered each day on average, it added.

Nidaa, a teacher with the humanitarian group’s education programme in Tawila, said children arrive showing “signs of acute trauma”.

“When we first started our classes, some of the children could not speak at all when they arrived. Others were waking up with nightmares,” she said. “They describe hiding for hours, travelling at night to avoid attacks, and becoming separated from family in the chaos.”

Fears of human trafficking

Humanitarian groups have said the already heavily populated displacement camps in Tawila are becoming overwhelmed with the influx of new arrivals from el-Fasher and its surrounding villages.

The Sudanese American Physicians Association estimated in early November that more than 650,000 internally displaced people from el-Fasher and other parts of Darfur had sought refuge in Tawila amid months of fighting in the region.

Nearly three-quarters of displaced residents – 74 percent – lived in informal sites without adequate infrastructure, the group said in a November 5 report, while less than 10 percent of displaced households had reliable access to water or latrines.

“These conditions mean Tawila has effectively become a stand-alone crisis epicentre, not merely an overflow from el-Fasher,” the report said.

At the same time, a group of UN experts warned on Thursday that the deteriorating situation in the region has opened Sudanese women and girls up to a heightened risk of sexual exploitation and trafficking.

Displaced children are also increasingly vulnerable to being recruited to fight in the escalating conflict, the experts said.

“We are deeply concerned at the alarming reports of human trafficking since the takeover of el-Fasher and surrounding areas by the [RSF],” they said in a statement.

“Women and girls have been abducted in RSF-controlled areas, and women, unaccompanied and separated children are at elevated risk of sexual violence and sexual exploitation.”

Noting that families have been left without shelter, humanitarian aid, and access to basic services, including healthcare and education, the experts called for “urgent action to end the human rights violations driving this suffering”.

London, United Kingdom – David Lesperance, a Canadian wealth adviser based in Poland, is working against the clock for one of his British clients.

John*, who requested anonymity, is trying to relocate from London to Dublin, the Irish capital, ahead of November 26, when Chancellor Rachel Reeves will deliver the budget – a statement presenting the Labour government’s plans for public finances for the year ahead.

Having built a company worth around 70 million pounds ($92m) that he plans to sell soon, John wants to avoid a hefty capital gains tax bill.

As his children are in university, upping sticks is possible. He hopes to take advantage of the Republic of Ireland’s non-domiciled, or “non-dom”, tax regime, which would exempt him from Irish taxes as well.

“We’ve been moving fast to organise his immediate departure to Ireland,” said Lesperance, who has been assisting him in shifting his assets abroad. “With higher taxes looming, the costs of leaving early are a rounding error.”

John is not alone.

The footballer Rio Ferdinand has recently moved to Dubai, citing tax as a push factor, while Egyptian billionaire and Aston Villa co-owner Nassef Sawiris, who moved his residency to Italy and the United Arab Emirates from Britain, told the Financial Times earlier this year that everyone in his “circle” is considering moving.

Herman Narula, the 37-year-old British Indian founder of Improbable, a tech company, announced this month that he is fleeing to Dubai. Worth about 700 million pounds ($920m), he is said to be Britain’s richest young entrepreneur. Among his reasons for fleeing were reported plans by the Labour government to impose an exit tax on wealthy people leaving the United Kingdom.

While that proposal appears to have been ditched, the overall business environment for entrepreneurs is increasingly unpredictable, Narula and a few others say.

“There is alarming evidence that some entrepreneurs are leaving the UK,” reads a recent open letter to Reeves, signed by more than a dozen wealthy business owners, including Nick Wheeler, founder and chair of the men’s clothing retailer Charles Tyrwhitt, and Annoushka Ducas, a jewellery designer.

“As the government prepares for this year’s Budget, it must carefully consider the cumulative impact of these policies on entrepreneurs,” the letter warns.

When the budget is delivered, all eyes will be on any changes to taxation – an issue affecting everyone in the UK. In recent months, speculation about tax amendments on property, incomes and pensions has repeatedly made headline news.

Rumours about the superrich abandoning the UK have been swirling for an even longer period, triggered by the mere prospect of a Labour government last year. Since the Keir Starmer-led government was elected last July, a range of media outlets have homed in on case studies suggesting that Labour is driving wealth out.

The first Labour budget last October outraged some high-earning individuals in the UK, who said they were already taxed too much.

“Last year’s Budget measures, including changes to Capital Gains Tax, Entrepreneur’s Relief, and Employer National Insurance, have increased costs for many entrepreneurs and enterprises,” read the recent open letter from wealthy business owners to Reeves.

Those changes came after the Conservatives abolished the non-dom regime, a status that allows for people with a residency abroad to avoid taxes in the UK.

But experts have offered words of caution on the supposed flight of the rich.

There is no official data on the number of wealthy individuals leaving because of Labour’s tax changes.

“The most recent tax data on wealthy individuals with non-dom status from HMRC [His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, the UK’s tax revenue department] shows that the number of non-doms leaving the UK is in line with or below official forecasts,” said Mark Bou Mansour, an advocate at the Tax Justice Network.

Claims that recent revenue-boosting tax reforms have triggered a massive non-dom exodus are false and part of a wider rhetoric that is detrimental to the UK’s fiscal and economic health, he said.

“Talking about whether the superrich will move if we tax can be a distraction from talking about the harms to economies and democracies that arise from not taxing extreme wealth,” he said.

Mansour pointed to a 2024 study by the London School of Economics that interviewed a number of wealthy individuals. It found the most important factors underpinning their reluctance to migrate were their attachment to the capital’s cultural infrastructure, private health services and schools, and the ability to maintain social ties.

“There’s plenty of strong evidence showing that the superrich don’t choose to relocate just to pay less tax,” said Mansour.

Behind a large number of articles predicting an exodus of wealthy people was a report by the passport advice firm Henley & Partners.

However, the report was found to be based on flawed methodology, and was later amended.

Even so, Lesperance said he has worked with a number of clients who have left the UK since Labour came into power.

He argued that while not necessarily large in number, the group makes up a high percentage of overall tax revenue raised by the government.

“The tax contribution of a non-dom is about 220,000 pounds ($289,000) a year, which is about six or seven times the UK average,” he said, “They’re super contributors” who need to be protected, or else, “You’re going to actually see a drop in annual tax collections because these people have left.”

Some of his clients have chosen to relocate to Milan and Dubai.

“As one of my clients said, ‘London’s nice, but it’s not that nice,’” he said.

But Michelle White, head of private office at UK wealth management firm Rathbones, said that while her clients are internationally mobile and could move away, the majority have stayed put so far.

“Since some of these articles started coming out saying the floodgates are open, we haven’t seen that,” she said.

Britain’s schools, legal system and business environment continue to be pull factors, she argued.

Those who have left usually have ventures or properties abroad and can easily relocate, or are considering selling their business in the next two years or so, and do not want to pay capital gains tax on sales.

Others have big payouts from private equity or hedge funds and want to avoid paying income tax.

“It means that they’ll go and spend more time somewhere else and less time here in order to not pay UK tax on that sale,” said White.

A large extent of her clientele in the end decides to stay in the UK to raise families, and mitigates taxation through smart planning.

“I tell people to look at the next 50 years and plan taxes around that,” she said, “People take a long view.

“Tax is one thing, but quality of life and how you actually want to live as a family often overrides the tax aspect.”