Incoming Prime Minister Andy Burnham is set to add as much as £38 billion to Britain’s already historically high tax bill to fund a progressive handout agenda, analysis from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party has warned.
Former Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, who is all but certain to be installed later this week as the new leader of the Labour Party after the downfall of Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, appears set to double down on the high-tax and spend ethos that failed to turn around the British economy.
Starmer’s government collapsed at least in part due to its failure to deliver economic growth — a key pledge made to the public during the 2024 general election — abandoning pro-business rhetoric upon coming to power in favour of record-setting taxes. While the incoming PM has played his cards close to the vest on most major policy positions, it appears that Burnham believes that diverting more private capital into the government’s coffers will somehow produce this so-far elusive economic growth.
According to an analysis of the various pledges made by Burnham, Reform UK has estimated that his Labour government would add another £38 billion ($51bn) in tax hikes on top of the £66 billion ($88bn) already imposed by the Starmer administration, taking the total Labour tax raid to around £104 billion ($139bn).
Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer for Reform, Robert Jenrick, told The Telegraph: “Andy Burnham has spent 20 years reaching for other people’s money – a death tax on family homes, a graduate tax on young people getting their first pay cheque, a £14bn raid on savings and investment, and new levies on everything from your parking space at work to your weekend away.
“Taken together with Rachel Reeves’s record, Labour could well raise more than £100bn a year of tax rises. If Mr Burnham disputes this, the remedy is simple: rule these 10 taxes out, by name, today.”
While yet to be confirmed, reported potential areas in which Burnham may hike taxes further include estate death taxes, changes to capital gains rates, and imposing National Insurance taxes on landlords’ rental income.
Such tax rises could further exacerbate issues like capital flight, which has already become a significant problem for the British economy, with an estimated record 16,500 millionaires leaving the UK in 2025 and taking around £69 billion ($92bn) with them.
Even still, Burnham appears intent on duplicating policies implemented in Manchester during his tenure as mayor, such as investment in public infrastructure funded in large part by taxes from elsewhere in the country.
Transferring wealth from the London region to the north of England and other economically deprived areas has been one of his few stated policy preferences ahead of his inauguration later this month.
However, to do so, he will likely need to turn to tax hikes that were not discussed in the 2024 Labour Party election manifesto. This would be especially true if Burnham raised the top tax rate for high-income earners to 50 per cent, which he has suggested he would support. Such a move would directly contravene Labour’s pledge to the public in the 2024 campaign not to raise income taxes.
This will bolster calls for a general election from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, which has argued that Burnham does not have an electoral mandate for his platform, given that he is set to become prime minister off the back of just 25,000 votes in a special by-election in the safe Labour seat of Makerfield last month.
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