Who was the Labour politician who wisely said 11 years ago that a mansion tax symbolised ‘the politics of envy’, which was ‘something that the public don’t particularly like’?

It was Andy Burnham. At that moment, the slippery fellow was passing himself off as a moderate, though that didn’t prevent him a few months later from taking a senior position in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet.

Burnham has changed his mind again. Now he believes in a mansion tax, and embraces the politics of envy that go with it. According to the Mail on Sunday, he is considering lowering the threshold at which it would become payable.

Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have already introduced a mansion tax, which may take effect as soon as April 2028. Owners of homes worth more than £2million will have to pay at least £2,500 a year on top of their council tax, rising in bands to £7,500 for properties worth more than £5million.

Burnham is reportedly thinking of lowering the threshold to £1.5million, so that an estimated 150,000 further households will join the 180,000 likely to be affected by the Starmer/Reeves plan.

No one would dispute that £1.5million is a lot of money. But in parts of London and the South-East, there are many comparatively modest dwellings worth this amount. Many of these are mortgaged to a lesser or greater extent.

Then there are hundreds of thousands of people whose homes are not yet worth £1.5million but might be in the not-too-distant future. They will live under the threat of a raid by our acquisitive new Prime Minister, who hasn’t bothered to submit himself to the approval of the electorate.

Nor can anyone be sure that, having reduced the threshold to £1.5million, the avaricious Burnham wouldn’t lower it once more, and trap further swathes of the middle classes in his draconian tax regime.

Andy Burnham is reportedly thinking of lowering the mansion tax threshold to £1.5million, so that an estimated 150,000 further households will join the plan

Pat McFadden complained that every meeting he had with members of the Parliamentary Labour Party concerned the question: ‘Who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others?’

In other words, people who don’t consider themselves at all rich, and are already struggling to pay bills, may find themselves targeted by a Burnham government. These would include old people on low incomes, who have been living in their valuable homes for decades.

This is where the politics of envy lead. The very rich, who can afford expensive accountants, have a sporting chance of mitigating confiscatory taxes. If necessary, they can more easily leave the country. It is people in the middle who are clobbered – those who have worked hard throughout their lives or are still doing so.

The effect of lowering the mansion tax threshold to £1.5million would be to depress house prices above, and perhaps below, that amount, as has happened to homes worth around £2million since Reeves unveiled her mansion tax in the Budget last November.

The wealth of hundreds of thousands would be reduced, while many of these same people would be forced to work harder or ransack their savings or make painful cutbacks in order to pay Burnham’s new taxes.

Why is he doing it? A few weeks ago, a private message sent by senior Cabinet Minister Pat McFadden to the disgraced Lord Mandelson came to light. McFadden happens to be one of the saner and more reasonable members of the front bench.

He complained that every meeting he had with members of the Parliamentary Labour Party concerned the question: ‘Who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others?’

That is where Burnham has landed in his current Left‑wing guise. He wants countless billions in new taxes – not, needless to say, to pay off our burgeoning national debt, but to splurge on his pet projects such as nationalisation and a massive programme of council house-building.

Even our new Prime Minister realises that Labour’s 2024 manifesto rules out increases in income tax, national insurance and VAT. But, as he puts it himself, there is ‘some room’ for other tax increases. Hence the extension of the mansion tax, and doubtless other ideas up his sleeve.

Urging him on is a coven of Labour MPs desperate for high office and dripping with the politics of envy. Louise Haigh (dismissed by Starmer for having once lied to police about her mobile phone being stolen) ran Burnham’s recent by-election campaign. She has repeatedly called for a wealth tax.

And there is his ‘transition policy chief’ Miatta Fahnbulleh, who has also championed a wealth tax, plus any new tax on the better-off she can think of, including raising capital gains tax to the levels of income tax.

Standing further back, and leading the chorus, is Sharon Graham, General Secretary of the Unite union. She says: ‘We must bite the bullet on a wealth tax to ensure our public services are protected . . . The choice should not be about whether to defend our nation or pay for schools, hospitals or roads.’

Never mind that taxation in this country is already at a record peacetime high. The Burnhamites refuse to countenance cuts in welfare or even modest economies in wasteful government spending. Tax, tax and tax again is their only mantra.

Burnham was once supposedly a Blairite. Will he take heed of the truth just uttered by Sir Tony Blair’s think-tank, and endorsed by the former PM himself, that we cannot ‘tax our way to prosperity’?

The warning relates to the idea, proposed by Miatta Fahnbulleh and others in the Burnham caravan, that capital gains tax should be aligned with income tax. This would assuredly lower investment and probably reduce tax receipts.

But what do the Burnhamites care? Envy is a powerful force, and it propels politicians to ignore economic realities as they cling to the intoxicating idea that they are virtuous.

Burnham’s ‘transition policy chief’ Miatta Fahnbulleh has championed a wealth tax and plans to raise capital gains tax to the levels of income tax

The worst of it all is that the British people – who, as Burnham once observed, don’t relish the politics of envy – are not being given a say as to whether they want to be the guinea pigs in what is certain to be a disastrous experiment.

Starmer was the victim of a coup. Whether you like him or hate him, this is beyond dispute. Now, like coup leaders in countries where democracy is not respected, Andy Burnham is furtively consolidating his power.

He won’t answer any questions from sceptical Labour MPs (there are a few) or the media. Indeed, he pointedly refused to allow questions from journalists a week ago after he had delivered a speech that was billed as foundational but was vacuous and full of cliches.

Admittedly, he did submit himself to an interview with sympathetic journalist Andrew Marr on LBC last week, but it was hardly eye-opening. He prefers to perform on social media on his terms. When appearing last Friday on the platform Reddit, he ignored questions he didn’t like.

In exactly a fortnight, this evasive, hitherto unaccountable man will be our Prime Minister, and with whichever Chancellor he chooses he will proceed to burden the middle classes with taxes that were not even vaguely intimated in Labour’s 2024 election manifesto.

The British people don’t want the politics of envy. They didn’t vote for them. But the surreptitious Burnhamites are nonetheless going to deliver them – along with the economic catastrophe that will inevitably follow.