JEFF PRESTRIDGE: I have proof Labour’s tax assault is killing aspiration. They’re heaping taxes on the productive while handing out benefits like confetti – and it’s strivers like YOU who bear the brunt

My dad, Stan the Man (God rest his soul), adored Margaret Thatcher. Whenever I came back home in the 1980s to see my parents, and talk moved on to politics – usually after a glass or two of Remy Martin – he would wax lyrical about her.

At the time, I railed against his rhetoric. I was young, not long out of university, and (I hate to say it) a wet Leftie. Oh dear, the foolishness of youth.

Occasionally, our arguments got over-heated but, looking back, I fully understand why Stan would not say a bad word about her.

It’s because Thatcher created the conditions for millions of working-class people, like my dad, to be rewarded for being aspirational, working hard and constantly wanting to better themselves for the greater good of their families.

The Iron Lady accomplished this by lowering taxes and encouraging people, irrespective of class, to build their own personal wealth through a mix of home ownership and long-term investing.

In my father’s case, it meant he was able to buy a succession of bigger family homes in Sutton Coldfield – the posh part of Birmingham – and fund a mortgage on his own income as a salesman in the rag trade.

Mum, meanwhile, looked after the family home and ensured me and my three siblings didn’t get up to mischief.

If Stan were alive today, he would despair at what Labour is doing (indeed, has already done) to quell aspiration and the entrepreneurial spirit in this country. And rightly so. I wouldn’t argue back.

Labour’s relentless tax assault on workers, small businesses, wealth creators and personal wealth is making it nigh on impossible for the UK economy to move forward.

To cut to the chase, it is subduing the drivers of economic growth by heaping taxes on the productive while handing out benefits to the unproductive like confetti.

Last Wednesday’s Money Mail research into the increasing tax burden placed on households over the past five, 20 and 40 years confirmed this unsustainable state of affairs.

Conducted by think-tank Tax Policy Associates, the results are both revealing and shocking.

Revealing… in that they show households of all sizes and ages to be paying more tax than they did five years ago. Admittedly, a result not just of Labour’s tax grabbing but the Conservatives’ need to make good the money spent keeping millions of households and businesses afloat during the Covid pandemic lockdown.

Shocking… in that it is primarily families where one high-earning adult brings home the bacon who are being fleeced the most. Not just when compared to five years ago, but also to 20 and 40 years ago.

For example, the think-tank calculates that a family of four, where there is a single earner on an annual salary of £110,000, currently pays combined household taxes of £60,117. Five years ago, an identical household would have paid equivalent taxes of £51,133 – £8,984 less.

The tax takes 20 and 40 years ago would have been £40,286 and £34,566 respectively.

For other households – for example, a first-time buyer, a retired couple and a family of four with two average earners – the current tax grab is higher than it was five years ago, but lower than it was back in 2006.

Although Tax Policy Associates has made numerous assumptions in arriving at these numbers, there is no hiding from the fact that it is families where there is a high earner who now bear more than their fair share of tax.

This is exactly the type of family I came from. Not rich, by any stretch of the imagination, but comfortably well off as a result of Stan’s work ethic (a trait that I have inherited).

With more tax rises already in train and new ones likely to be announced in the autumn Budget (maybe earlier if the Prime Minister is ousted and a new Chancellor is appointed), the future does not look bright.

We are being smothered in an unpalatable smorgasbord of taxes by a Government seemingly intent on turning the country into a socialist state. A country where hard work is not rewarded and shirkers are prioritised over strivers.

As Stan the Man would have said, Labour is in grave danger of killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

It’s time for a change of direction on tax before it’s too late.