The crippling burden of taxation faced by UK taxpayers is the highest as a proportion of GDP since World War Two. The question of what hardworking people actually get for their money is a live one – a problematic NHS with a budget of more than £200bn in England still fails many, an immigration system struggles to process 90,000 would-be asylum seekers as protests grow, and a housing crisis in much of the UK adds up to a working-age population not getting much bang for its buck.

Working people, priced out of much of what the previous generation enjoyed as of right, have become a resentful workforce getting up every morning but with little to show when an honest day’s work is complete. What the reward for doing the right thing is and what is fair are the two most pertinent issues Reform UK wants to answer. The urgency of their thinking presses as Andy Burnham reportedly mulls an early election.

Pensions currently cost taxpayers £146.1bn. That’s nearly two and a half times what the UK spends on defence. There is a widening gulf between what public sector employees receive as employer contributions, what the private sector contributes to its employees and what those working for themselves can afford to contribute. Intergenerational fairness is a key point of the argument, but it’s about much more than that too. Current pensioners, understandably, say they have “paid their stamp” and are entitled to a state pension.

This is true, but the Office for National Statistics points to 89.2 per cent of pensioners being net recipients of government money, largely because of the classification of state pensions and pension credits as cash benefits. A House of Commons Work and Pensions Select Committee report in 2017 pointed to an estimate by Professor Sir John Hills of the London School of Economics that pensioners born between 1956 and 1961 will receive 118 per cent of what they have paid into the system.

The same is not true for the next generation, and that is unlikely to change. Unsurprisingly, Reform is alive to this discontent and seeks to capitalise on it. Tinkering hasn’t worked, as Nigel Farage knows, and his plan is not so much to reform a system as to blow it up and start again. Doing the hard work for him is his pet think-tank, the Centre for a Better Britain, which has come up with radical economic proposals in advance of the Budget in just over a month’s time. Whilst Chancellor John Healey is unlikely to pay Farage’s wonks much heed in his Budget planning, voters just might just listen.

And the proposals are radical. Abolishing the state pension with an associated £75bn of sweeping tax cuts, including capital gains tax and inheritance tax, scrapping stamp duty on property and shares, digital service tax, air passenger duty and reducing corporation tax by 10 percentage points over eight years. This is big stuff. Cuts in public spending would occur alongside this, cementing Reform’s long-term proposal to reduce the size of the state. There is less detail on the latter, perhaps because it is likely to be even more controversial than the tax cutting and pensions proposals. One shock at a time may be the calculation.

The state pension proposal will garner most traction and debate. Even its prospect will spook many retirees, most of whom vote, and many of whom are part of the fifth to a quarter of the electorate who support Reform. Having this proposal at a slight remove from Reform’s hierarchy allows test balloon launching and deniability. Already it is clear that those who are on the lowest incomes would have a state pension-style safety net under this proposal, and this is a line to which those doing the hard work of selling this proposal will have to return frequently.

A significant proportion of the electorate is hungry for change, but whether such a radical proposal can be put into a Reform manifesto and supported – particularly by pensioners or those about to retire – is questionable. Will working people, perhaps wondering whether they can afford a holiday next summer, be convinced 15 per cent of their income is necessary annually for a personal retirement pot?

Labour has already rubbished the plans, with party chairwoman Bridget Phillipson saying: “These plans would see Reform UK come for your pension, while offering tax cuts for the richest and cuts to public services for everyone else. Pensioners will rightly question what proposals like these could mean for them and their family.”

There is no doubt the pensions system as it stands will fall over before long. Millions of working people are paying high taxes to support a system from which they will almost certainly never benefit. The issue is about political will and voter support, and whether these radical proposals can happen now.

The alternative is something even less palatable being forced on an even more sceptical and beaten-down electorate in the longer term.