Wealth Tax Stays Off the Table as Burnham-Era Budget Dodges Rich

By Olivia Hart

John Healey's first budget, delivered this week, will not include a wealth tax on fortunes above £10 million — despite polling that shows three in five Reform-leaning voters support taxing the super-rich. Andy Burnham, whose political era the budget opens, ruled the levy off the table in July. The decision sets the tone for a programme that was sold as the end of neoliberalism.

The specifics are blunt. Equalising capital gains tax with income tax has been ruled out, as Healey confirmed on October 20. A genuine wealth tax on those holding more than £10 million is, in Burnham's own framing from July 15, off the agenda for now. Even the briefed increase in the banking surcharge only restores the charge to where it stood before the Conservatives cut it in 2023. That is a rollback, not a new burden.

What does the public actually want?

The gap between Westminster and the electorate is the story's sharpest tension. Poll after poll — from Oxfam UK, Unison and Tax Justice UK — shows the British public overwhelmingly supports wealth taxes on the super-rich. The most striking figure: Best for Britain's polling found three in five Reform-leaning voters back such a tax. Oxfam's survey followed Gary Lineker's public call to be taxed more.

That support cuts across party lines. It is not confined to Labour's base or progressive think tanks. Yet the first budget of the Burnham era contains no structural tax on wealth. Voters, on this evidence, are ahead of their representatives.

How concentrated is UK wealth?

The numbers cited in the debate are stark. According to the Equality Trust, the richest 50 families in the UK possess more wealth than half of the UK population — roughly 33 million people. For scale: 50 households hold more than one in two Britons combined.

Research published in the Economic Journal links that concentration to economic weakening. Separate work from the London School of Economics argues inequality erodes community fabric, and a University of Chicago study finds economic inequality contributes to democratic erosion. These are academic claims, and causality in social science is contested terrain. But the direction of the cited evidence is consistent.

What did Burnham himself promise?

The sharpest weapon in the critics' arsenal is Burnham's own record. In May 2025, as mayor of Greater Manchester, he explicitly acknowledged that Britain has "overtaxed labour and undertaxed wealth." The comment, reported by LabourList, was read at the time as a challenge to Keir Starmer's leadership. Now in power, Burnham's first budget declines to act on the diagnosis he himself set out.

Healey's budget may still deliver trailed policies on supporting high streets, financial devolution and longer-term investment. Those remain briefed intentions rather than confirmed measures. The author of the critique, Faiza Shaheen, executive director of Tax Justice UK, detects "more than a whiff of trickle-down economics" in the approach. Her view is that of an advocate, not a neutral assessor. But the test is simple: a budget that leaves the £10 million-plus cohort untouched cannot, by definition, rebalance the labour-wealth split Burnham described.

What happens next?

The budget settles the opening question but not the political one. Public backing for wealth taxation — including among Reform voters — gives opponents of the status quo a constituency that crosses party lines. If inequality continues to track the outcomes the cited research predicts, pressure for a wealth tax is likely to return before the next fiscal cycle. In plain words: the policy is off the table for now, and the argument is not.