Shadow economist and part-time scapegoat Anneliese Dodds has urged Chancellor Rachel Reeves to consider a wealth tax at the next Budget, ideally before the UK starts raffling off state schools to hedge funds and replacing the NHS with a JustGiving page.
In a bold move that has already seen four billionaires book one-way tickets to Dubai, Dodds suggested taxing people who own more than two houses and a yacht named after their ex-wife. Her proposal comes after Labour’s internal fiscal strategy, “cut stuff and hope no one notices”, hit a snag when someone noticed.
Speaking to Sky News, Dodds insisted “those with the broadest shoulders” should pay more, prompting panic in Knightsbridge where shoulder-enhancing tailoring is now considered a tax liability.
The proposal, which involves taxing net assets over a certain threshold, described by Conservative backbenchers as “basically genocide”, is reportedly being “thought about deeply” by Reeves, which in Westminster-speak translates to “taped under a desk and ignored until after the next scandal”.
Reeves has already pledged not to raise taxes on “working people”, a group defined by Labour as “anyone who doesn’t own a racehorse or a personalised helicopter”.
Meanwhile, Angela Rayner has been spotted lurking near the Treasury with a calculator and a flamethrower, suggesting Labour may also reconsider pension perks, corporate tax, and whether billionaires should be allowed to count offshore money buried in the garden of Monaco as “savings”.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer, recently forced into a £5bn U-turn on welfare cuts, said, “You can’t just tax your way to growth,” before retreating into a hedge shaped like Gordon Brown and muttering about “fiscal headroom”.
As the public braces for more “difficult decisions”, rumours swirl that future Budgets may include taxing dreams, garden gnomes over three feet tall, and anyone who still uses the phrase “trickle-down”.
Reporting from down the M62, where we’re already taxing whippets, flat caps and the word “aye” to fund our local GP’s printer toner.
