The bottom line? Britain cannot afford a wealth tax

Keir Starmer, what have you done? Having climbed down over welfare reform, the prime minister now faces a left wing with the bit between their teeth. They are in the ascendant all right, and don't they know it.

- CHRIS BLACKHURST

The latest to step up to the plate is Neil Kinnock. The former Labour leader says there are “pathways” to raising taxes that, I think, people are willing to explore and actually would commend themselves to the great majority of the general public.

“They include, for instance, asset taxes in a period in which for the last 20-odd years in the United Kingdom, like quite a lot of other Western economies, earned incomes have stagnated in real terms while asset values have zoomed. They’ve just gone through the roof and they’ve been barely touched.

“Now, you wouldn’t have to touch assets of under £6m or £7m, so people’s houses would be secure, obviously. But even by going for an imposition of 2 per cent on asset values above £10m, say, which is a very big fortune, the government would be in a position to collect £10bn or £11bn a year.”

Kinnock once told the party conference: “I am telling you, no matter how entertaining, how fulfilling to short-term egos, you can’t play politics with people’s jobs and with people’s services or with their homes.” Presumably he did not mean rich people who create those jobs.

Because, make no mistake, he is playing politics with