Andy Burnham’s tourist tax will discourage tourists more effectively than Basil Fawlty…. and strivers have had enough

MAGGIE THATCHER warned us about the dangers of tax-and-spend governments half a century ago.

Three years before becoming PM, she famously quipped: “The problem with socialism is you eventually run out of other people’s money.”

It was a line designed to provoke. But today it sounds less like a political punchline and more like a terrifying prophecy.

Taxes are at an 80-year high and Labour is gearing up to come back for more in next month’s Budget. Hard-working taxpayers watching every pound must dread it.

But it has already started. Andy Burnham’s pet project of handing more power to the regions seems to be a smokescreen for yet more tax rises.
Labour mayors are treating devolution like a direct pipeline to our wallets.

They exercised their new authority by slapping a tourist tax on stays at hotels, holiday lets and B&Bs, adding up to £90 to the cost of a week-long family staycation.

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But perhaps our pop-loving PM should update his playlist and fire up an iconic Beatles’ track, Taxman, written when a previous Labour government squeezed workers’ pay packets.

George Harrison sang: “If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat, If you get too cold, I’ll tax the heat. If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet.”

The song concludes: “’Cos I’m the taxman. Yeah, I’m the taxman. And you’re working for no one but me.”

We’re fast reaching the point where both Thatcher and Harrison’s sardonic words are in danger of becoming a grim reality.

There really isn’t any money left to meet Burnham’s early feel-good commitments and find an extra £5billion for our hollowed-out Armed Forces.

Borrowing is out of the question. We now spend twice as much servicing our £3trillion national debt as we do on defence.

But hard-working taxpayers, like the Government, feel they are fast reaching breaking point.

Their pension pots have been raided. Anyone who enjoys a night out, a flutter on the horses or even a milkshake is hammered.

Labour’s freezing of thresholds will drag 1.94million people into higher-rate tax bands by next April, according to HMRC estimates.

Don’t believe the rich and famous who tell us they are happy to fund government spending.

The Treasury has received just £550 in voluntary donations since Gary Lineker and 120 other millionaires sent an open letter to the PM begging to pay more tax.

Labour loves to lecture the Tories and Reform about using the “politics of division”.

But it is their own tax and spend obsession that is hammering a wedge through the middle of Britain.

The Government now splurges more on welfare payments than it receives in income tax.

The bill is set to hit £407billion by 2030 — equivalent to £11,807 for every working man and woman.

Alarm-clock Britons, who drag themselves out of bed every morning to do an honest day’s graft then watch their pay packets plundered by the taxman, might ask: “Why do I even bother?”

Take the rail worker I chatted to last week. He’s 66, worked all his life and can’t afford to retire.

He earns just above the minimum wage, but between his salary and his state pension, the taxman claws back nearly £6,500 a year.

Yet a 25-year-old claiming non-means-tested disability and out-of-work benefits can rake in a tax-free income from the State.

Some 200,000 families now pocket more in benefits than the average worker’s annual salary of £39,000.

It is little wonder Welfare Secretary Pat McFadden once let slip that all Labour MPs ever do is ask, “Who can we tax next to pay for more benefits?”

The tragedy is that many caught up in the welfare trap are decent people who want to work, but the system is plagued by bureaucratic madness.

Look at the taxi driver who had to stop working after open-heart surgery.

When he was desperately ill, he had to fight tooth and nail just to get long-term sickness support.

When he finally recovered, he did the honest thing and contacted the DWP to say, “Stop the money. I’m back at work.”

The response was that they couldn’t just stop the payment. He had to be “reassessed”.

THREE YEARS later, he was still getting the cash and still waiting for the paperwork.

He rightly fumed: “When you’re at your lowest, you can’t get help. When you’re better, they won’t stop giving you cash.”

The taxman can’t keep coming back to the same cash-strapped families and demanding more when so much of our money is being needlessly frittered away.

Britain isn’t a bottomless wallet — and strivers have had enough.

WHATEVER happened to Sir Ed Davey?

Famed for wetsuits, paddleboards and bungee jumps, the Lib Dem leader’s latest stunt appears to be a vanishing act.

With 71 MPs, you’d think you’d hear more from him.

Perhaps he’ll surprise us by arriving at his party’s conference in Brighton this week by parachute.

That’s one way to get a bounce in the polls.

ANDY Burnham has been learning a lot about the North-South divide since he became Prime Minister.

It has suddenly dawned on him that Manchester is, inconveniently, quite a long way from London.

Amid much fanfare, he opened No10 North in Manchester to break free from the “Westminster bubble” and bring power to the people.

But now it seems he can barely get there himself.

Sources say he is struggling to find time to make the 200-mile trip to Manchester because of the small matter of running the country from Downing Street.

Who knew being PM involved so much work?

It’s been made worse by his legendary gift of the gab.

Aides are reportedly frustrated by his tendency to turn meetings into marathon philosophical seminars, leaving his planned diary looking like an M1 pile-up.

His workload and time split means that the PM’s weekend retreat, Chequers, has been barely used in the eight weeks since he became PM.