Socialists dream of a wealth tax much as small children dream of Santa Claus. 

They imagine that if they can find a legal way to plunder other people’s savings, they can achieve two of their key aims. 

First, such a tax would destroy the independent middle class, which stands in the way of unlimited Left-wing government and a society wholly dominated by the State.

Second, as long as the cash lasts, it would give them a new source of other people’s money to squander on bribes to the electorate.

In fact, such taxes rarely succeed. But they do plenty of damage while they fail. They cost a lot to administer. They drive well-off people abroad, and they are blatantly unjust, taxing money on which heavy taxes have already been paid.

The real problem, as Premier-to-be Andy Burnham knows, is that – almost 30 years after the start of Blairism – Britain has reached the limits of spending, taxation and debt. 

VAT is now punitive. Pledges not to raise income tax are false. Failing to raise thresholds, especially the misnamed ‘higher rate’, has dragged modest earners into intolerable tax brackets devised for the super-rich.

National Insurance is seriously damaging employment. The disguised tax known as student loans is biting hard into the modest incomes of graduates and is persuading growing numbers to turn away from higher education.

Britain’s poor economic performance and indebtedness is becoming more widely known, making it harder and more expensive for us to borrow abroad.

Hidden borrowing, such as the Private Finance Initiative so heavily used by the Blair government, has run out of road, proving to be far more costly than normal debt.

Currently, the Treasury is actually borrowing money to pay interest on the national debt. Annual debt interest spending was about £110 billion in the 2025-26 fiscal year.

Any reasonable Premier or Chancellor, faced with such sums, would be looking for ways to trim the ballooning welfare budget, which is about a quarter of all spending. 

But not Mr Burnham or his movement.

Yesterday the Unite general secretary, Sharon Graham, urged Labour to ‘bite the bullet on a wealth tax to ensure our public services are protected and strengthened’. 

She was not speaking in a vacuum. 

There are strong suggestions that Mr Burnham’s advisers are considering extending the so-called ‘mansion tax’.

This could mean sharply raising the amounts payable, as well as lowering the threshold from the current £2 million to £1.5 million. How long before they bring it down to £1 million or even less?

The term ‘mansion tax’ was always absurd. House price inflation means that many houses once considered modest now cost £1 million in the South East. 

Yet this money comes from savings, generally built up over a lifetime from income that has already been taxed.

These plans are unjust, wrong and dangerous to liberty and prosperity.

Let us hope that the forces of conservatism in this country will now swiftly regroup, to stand up for strivers, savers and wealth creators, and to combat those who seek to tax them out of existence.