What Burnham would mean for your council tax – and how some households could save £950

Many Labour MPs believe they have finally found their moment to scrap a system they call “a tax on deprivation” – and their hopes rest on Andy Burnham.

The Greater Manchester mayor, the frontrunner to replace Keir Starmer should he win next week’s Makerfield byelection, has argued that land is under-taxed, fuelling expectations that he could overhaul a council tax system that often leaves a modest terrace in the North of England paying more than a London mansion.

More than a dozen of those MPs, mostly from northern seats, wrote to Rachel Reeves last autumn urging her to scrap the tax altogether.

Shorts

“It cannot be right,” says Chris Webb, the MP for Blackpool South and a signatory of the letter, that his constituents pay more “than the owner of a £10m mansion in Mayfair”.