𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

It’s become obvious that Andy Burnham has entered No 10 with no plan for the country. He’s been flailing around from issue to issue, making one unfunded promise after another, hoping that the public doesn’t start scratching under the surface of his pie-in-the-sky handouts.

First, he said he’d scrap VAT on electricity bills, saving households just £1 per week. Burnham told us that the £850million bill for this move would be funded by scrapping digital ID, only for the embittered Darren Jones – who was booted out of government to make room for convicted fraudster Louise Haigh – to reveal that the digital ID plans didn’t have a single penny allocated to them. Now, Burnham is looking to sort out the mess that is social care in this country. He’s not given us any inkling of a plan, but we know that creating a system of universal provision could cost more than £18billion a year.

How will he fund it? We don’t know that either. But if there’s one certainty in life, it’s that Labour’s first instinct is always to reach into your back pocket to pay for their unfunded wish lists.

Instead of stopping the boats – an issue our new Prime Minister has failed to mention once and would save us £5 billion – it looks like more tax rises are on the way for all of us.

Burnham has been an enthusiastic cheerleader in the past for a flat 10% tax on everyone’s inheritance. He tried to implement it once as health secretary, then pushed for it again as Ed Miliband’s shadow health secretary.

This is little more than a universal death tax, levied on the inheritance of every single person, regardless of how few assets, cash or savings they may have. No exemptions.

As it stands, fewer than 5% of deaths have resulted in an inheritance tax charge. Now, Labour looks set to fleece hundreds of thousands more ordinary families with a death tax right as they’re grieving the loss of their loved ones.

Punishing families at their lowest point was not in Labour’s manifesto. Andy Burnham has absolutely zero mandate to reheat his failed policies and inflict yet another huge tax on a country that is already struggling.

Whatever the solution to social care, raiding taxpayers yet again cannot be the answer. If Burnham thinks it is, he should put it to the country in a general election and see what the British people make of it.