In Monaco, I briefly felt like a billionaire. Though it was December, every afternoon I swam in a heated pool on the roof of my hotel. On one side was the Mediterranean, on the other the mountains, and everywhere were apartment blocks crammed with tax-dodgers. It was perfectly quiet: noise is the enemy of the principality, even worse than socialism.

I had arrived expecting to write that Monaco was the past: tax havens, I’d read, were under threat. Instead, I returned to middle-class life feeling that the tiny state for rich people is the global future. As western countries emerge from recession, the contours of post-crash society are becoming visible: increasingly, the rich inhabit a low-tax universe segregated from everyone else.

It’s true that tax havens have taken some stick lately. In April 2009, the depths of recession, global leaders threatened them. Gordon Brown, the then British prime minister, announced at the G20 summit that banking secrecy “must come to an end”.