MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: Balancing the books is never on Labour's agenda

Published: 00:19, 26 July 2026 | Updated: 01:48, 26 July 2026 After all the weeks he had to prepare for his takeover, Andy Burnham seems remarkably unready to govern. His policy and spending announcements ran into predictable trouble that his courtiers should have spotted, even if Mr Burnham was too busy or too excited. In most cases, the obvious question was: ‘How will you pay for this?’ And the answers were sketchy at best. There is a simple reason for this. Mr Burnham, like most socialists, does not really believe in the cutting of coats according to how much cloth you have. He says that he adheres to such ideas. But he doesn’t really. Again and again Labour governments steer merrily towards highly visible rocks for this reason.  They repeatedly load the people with debt and taxes, plus the occasional devaluation or the monstrosity of concealed spending that is the Private Finance Initiative. And here we go again. A Tory analysis of Burnham’s promises show that he has already pledged to spend £95.9 billion which he has not got, trying to cover this with frothy, mumbled claims that the money will come from cancelling projects which – alas – have not actually been allotted earmarked budgets.  Thus, real money will somehow be extracted from purely theoretical money, rather like conjuring moonbeams from cucumbers. Here we go again. Whatever the overthrow of Sir Keir Starmer was about, it was not aimed at balancing the national books. Its main effect may well be a rapid revival of the Tory Party, if Kemi Badenoch and her lieutenants have the sense to take advantage of the open goal they are being offered. Prime Minister Andy Burnham holds a National Economic Council meeting alongside Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer John Healey The amazing thing about our tax system is that so many people honestly and promptly pay up, year after year. We do so because we know that taxes are the price that we pay for a civilised society. No sensible person pretends he likes it – except Gary Lineker, the crisp expert and Left-wing pundit, who recently revealed in a public letter that he longed to pay more tax. Let him do so. The authorities are always happy to accept voluntary contributions. But, as The Mail on Sunday shows in detail today, Mr Lineker has had a number of opportunities to pay more tax but, strangely, has turned them down.  He has preferred to use accountants and lawyers to behave just like everyone else, and reduce his tax as far as the law permits. And why not? Gary Lineker, pictured with his ex-wife Danielle Bux, has been accused of 'gross hypocrisy' after calling for tax hikes despite fighting a five-year legal battle with HMRC and his involvement in a controversial tax avoidance scheme Mr Lineker’s actions, in seeking to keep more of his own money, are a good deal wiser than most of the opinions that come out of his mouth. So how do we square this with his signature on the famous letter in which more than 100 ‘patriotic millionaires’ told the Prime Minister: ‘We want you to tax us. We can afford it.’ True, they can afford it. But they can also afford to hire experts to take the edge off it. Could it be that they really want Mr Burnham to tax other people, the ones who are not so keen? There is a very old word for this: hypocrisy. Mr Lineker should do his good deeds in secret and in silence. In fact, the less noise from him, the better.