The Labour leadership contest has taken a turn which, though not unexpected, is wildly alarming.

Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting are vying to show which of them can produce an array of tax increases that would do most damage to the middle classes.

It evidently doesn’t matter to either of these creepily ambitious politicians that taxation is already at a record peacetime high. Nor does it occur to them that the main reason for economic growth being so elusive is that businesses and consumers are borne down by excessive taxes.

The International Monetary Fund’s recent warning that Britain is reaching the point of peak taxation, and may soon struggle to borrow money from the bond markets, has gone over the heads of these two would-be prime ministers.

Isn’t it absolutely incredible that Burnham and Streeting should think that filching yet more money from the pockets of hard-working people is the right prescription for our ailing country?

Needless to say, neither is spending any time setting out plans for reducing public expenditure. We don’t hear any proposals from them for even a modest trimming of the soaring welfare budget.

In recent days Reform UK – which is slugging it out with Burnham in the Makerfield by-election – has pledged to abolish the Cabinet Office (headcount 11,000). The party has also said it would reduce the number of civil servants by 70,000, about 13 per cent of the total.

But there have been no similar undertakings from our spendthrift duo. They’re not interested in saving taxpayers’ money, just in spending as much of it as they can.

Streeting’s approach is the more surprising since some of us had marked him down as a disciple of Tony Blair, whose institute has tended to argue for lower taxes.

But Wes is desperately trying to keep up with Andy. Last week he undertook to align capital gains tax (CGT) with income tax. This would mean that the rate of CGT paid by higher rate taxpayers would almost double from 24 per cent to 45 per cent.

This would very likely restrict investment. Helen Miller, head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies – not generally viewed as a Right-wing organisation – warned: ‘Simply raising rates would not raise big sums of revenue. It could easily lose money and it could reduce investment.’

We shouldn’t waste too much time on Wes because he probably won’t become prime minister. If Burnham wins in Makerfield, he will proceed in triumph to London, vanquish Sir Keir Starmer, and swat Wes aside in the process.

If, as I hope and pray, Burnham loses in Makerfield, the rather limp Streeting is unlikely to unseat Starmer. Polling suggests, and common sense confirms, that the Prime Minister would comfortably see him off.

Andy Burnham is the man we should worry about. He really could be installed in No 10 before the autumn – promulgating radical policies for which he has no mandate.

His approach is to tax, tax and tax again – and to target his fire on those who have managed to build up some assets through hard work and saving.

Burnham’s first idea is a so-called land tax, which has been bubbling away in his mind for at least 15 years.

He believes land is ‘under taxed’, and wants to introduce a new levy.

Assessing the value of land would be a fiendishly complex business, and Burnham might well have vacated No 10 by the time it was completed. Its only apparent merit is that it discourages speculators from hoarding unused land.

But if it were applied in addition to existing property taxes – stamp duty, council tax and Rachel Reeves’ forthcoming mansion tax – it would place an intolerable extra burden on ordinary taxpayers.

Andy Burnham won’t say whether a land value tax would replace existing property taxes or be levied on top of them. I think we can supply the answer, given his views. It would be an additional tax that would bear down on the middle classes.

Burnham’s other bright idea is to replace inheritance tax (IHT) with a ‘death tax’, which would be used to pay for social care. The cost of such care is largely met by local councils for those with assets of less than £23,250.

Again, Andy is being conveniently vague – presumably because he has so far not got beyond jotting down what pass for his thoughts on the back of a beer mat – but his new death tax would ensnare many more of us.

IHT raises about £9 billion a year, though more and more people are caught up in it as the £325,000 threshold has remained frozen since 2009.

If Burnham wanted his new death tax to cover all social care costs (forecast to reach £39 billion by the end of the decade) he would have to tax existing payers of IHT more, as well as people not currently paying it.

Inheritance tax is widely unpopular. Even those in no immediate danger of being drawn into it often dislike it because they recognise the unfairness of a tax on assets that have already been taxed. Many civilised countries, some with Left-wing governments, have no death duties at all.

Yet here is Burnham proposing a new death tax for social care, which would be almost certain to increase the burden on people with modest savings. Should we take him at his word?

Generous souls may say he is trying to appeal to Labour Party members, who are decidedly Left-wing and will determine the outcome of the leadership contest unless there is a coronation.

He is also at pains to portray himself as an authentic working-class lad, though it transpires that he grew up in quite a privileged family whose home in a leafy street in a Cheshire village is now thought to be worth £1.3 million.

Conceivably Andy doesn’t mean everything he says.

But it is surely prudent to assume that a Labour politician who talks about new taxes will introduce them if given the opportunity.

And although Burnham concedes that neither of his proposed taxes was trailed in the party’s 2024 election manifesto, it would be foolish to conclude that he wouldn’t try to shove them down our throats on becoming prime minister.

The truth is that Burnham is an atavistic figure from his party’s pre-Blairite past, when a Labour government raised the top rate of income tax to 83 per cent on earned income and 98 per cent on unearned income.

He believes in high tax, nationalisation, more state control, while throwing in rejoining the EU as an unwelcome bonus.

The country certainly hasn’t voted for any of these things but it looks as though we will get them all the same if Andy Burnham, aka King of the North, kisses hands with the King and becomes prime minister.

Only two things can save us. One is the voters of Makerfield. The other – should they fail us, which I fear they might, particularly if the Right remains divided – is Sir Keir Starmer himself.

I won’t say all is forgiven. I will say that such small hope as we have this side of the next election resides in the stolid, dull, flawed, infuriating, sometimes wrong-headed man still clinging to power in Downing Street.