There are proposals for restrictions on Airbnb lets and holiday rentals, as well as extra levies, which will make it far harder to offset some of the costs by renting a property out for part of the year. Perhaps worst of all, Rachel Reeves is threatening a huge rise in capital gains tax in her horror Budget planned for next month, potentially doubling the amount you have to pay if you sell up. It is hardly surprising that many have decided it is no longer worth the expense, especially as cheap flights mean you can buy something in Italy, France or Spain instead. 

Sure, that may be celebrated in the villages of Pembrokeshire. Many locals have been campaigning against second homes for years, complaining that they drive up prices and that commercial centres are empty on weekdays. Add in some anti-English, or anti-London, rhetoric and it makes for a potent message. Weekend residents have been demonised and scapegoated for a long time. 

Many will have sympathy with the sentiment. The trouble is, however, second-home owners will be missed when they are gone. 

First, house prices will surely fall, even by only a little. That may make it easier to buy, but it will also reduce the incentive to build more, and invest in local infrastructure. As the war on landlords has taught us, you don’t help people get on the property ladder by attacking the people who are already there. 

Next, some local businesses will be forced to close down. In all the holiday home hotspots, there are gastro-pubs and restaurants, gift shops, bakeries, lettings agents and tradesmen who depend on the second-home owners, and the occasional visitors they may let their property to in order to stay afloat. If those businesses close down, they are not going to be magically replaced by life sciences labs or green energy hubs, or whatever the campaigners think will take their place. Premises will stay closed forever, which risks turning high streets with gift and tea shops into boarded-up wastelands. 

Perhaps worst of all, unemployment will inevitably rise, which will prove crippling in areas where far too many people are already reliant on benefits. 

Ironically, the extra taxes will not even raise very much money. Fife Council, for example, doubled the council tax on second homes in April, a move expected to bring in an extra £3.9m in revenue. But so far it has only reached £1.6m, and as many more sell up – which typically takes a few months – it may well be even less. As much as it may come as a surprise to Fife councillors, people don’t have an unlimited appetite for paying extra taxes. At a certain point, they will break, and they will have no choice but to sell. 

In fact, the real problem was never second homes. As it happens, the UK has a very low rate of second-home ownership. Around 3pc of the British housing stock is made up of vacation properties. That compares to 10pc in France, where a family residence somewhere in the countryside is considered completely normal among the middle classes, or Norway, which has more than 90 second homes per 1,000 people, often along the stunning coastline. 

In a well-run country, second homes are celebrated and encouraged as a way of improving living standards, bringing people from different parts of the country together and generating wealth and employment away from the major industrial and financial centres. 

We should be allowing far more of them to be built, so that we reach French or even Norwegian levels of ownership. Instead, we are using extra taxes to punish anyone who dares to own more than one property, driving them out of the UK. They will be poorer, and so will everyone in the villages and coastal towns they have abandoned – and worst of all, it may well be too late to stop it now.