Britain’s likely new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, is to the left of Keir Starmer. He describes himself as a business-friendly socialist or aspirational socialist. I suppose President Xi could be described the same way. Additionally, he believes in seizing the means of production. Rather than seeking the complete overthrow of capitalism, his economic model combines public investment and the nationalization of utilities (like rail). Somehow, he will have a thriving, market-based private sector. In other words, he says he is a democratic socialist. There is no such thing as a democratic socialist, as Karl Marx has written. It’s the front door to communism.

Burnham says he won’t raise the main rates of taxes. He might reduce immigration.

According to the Telegraph, he plans a war on wealth and is coming for people’s homes.

Burnham won’t last. The British people liked Starmer far more than Burnham until they saw his policies.

Doubling Down on What Doesn’t Work

This is what the Labour Party is in the U.K. It is what the Democrat Party is becoming in the United States, a socialist party that becomes communist once it seizes the means of production, while calling itself a Democratic Socialist Party.

The UK isn’t doing well after two years of Starmer, and now they could have three years of this.

Burnham plans to increase welfare with an inheritance tax, hitting the rich the hardest. He plans to divert money from affordable housing to social welfare rents.

Taxing Land on Value

His plans include changing how businesses are taxed and adopting progressive taxation. Burnham has long supported a land value tax levied annually on the value of the land itself, excluding the value of buildings and improvements. The idea is to penalize people who just own land.

In 2022, in an interview with LBC, he described the measure as a “very productive form of taxation because you make sure land is used for good, productive purposes, and if people are sitting on it and hoarding it, they get taxed, and that money can come back and be redistributed.”

He has previously suggested the tax could be used to scrap stamp duty, which is levied when you buy a new property or land.

An IFS report said a land value tax had several advantages, including that it was in fixed supply and could not be moved abroad, meaning it would “not create the disincentive effects associated with other taxes”.

The report described it as an “efficient way to tax a wealthy group,” but noted concerns about fairness.

Burnham is going to increase the insurance that businesses pay. His plan is to also raise their taxes if they are near a railroad he wants to build. Then, he wants to spend billions on WASPI women. The WASPI women said that in the 1950s, they suffered distress when the retirement age was raised to 65. He wants to spend over $10 billion of other people’s money in the interest of fairness. Life isn’t fair. Someone needs to tell Andy.

He sounds like a loser.