Fresh from his diplomatic mission to Kyiv, our Prime Minister comes home to grapple with an intractable domestic issue. He must begin to work out how we as a country can stop living beyond our means. Then he has to explain it to us. And, after that, we have to get behind it.

The forthcoming Budget is the first time the shape of the Andy Burnham premiership will begin to reveal itself beyond the positive soundbites and the capped bus fares, and the promise to do something about the privatised water racketeers. On 28 October, when John Healey unveils what’s in his red box, we will see the initial workings out of the Burnham government’s exam question: You have a populace which wants first-rate public services but low taxes. How can you make that work?

For the past 20 years or so, successive administrations facing the same question have sought different answers, from Austerity (Cameron/Osborne) to Whiplash (Truss), and plenty of emergency borrowing in between. The plain fact is that, whether under Coalition, Conservative or Labour rule, we have continued to spend more than we raise in tax, to the extent that while government debt was 35 per cent of GDP in the mid-2000s, it is now 95 per cent.

I understand that people wake up in the middle of the night worrying about how to pay the electric bill rather than how the government pays down its debt, but pretty well everyone should be aware by now that the big sum – spending on public services against tax revenues – just doesn’t add up. That doesn’t automatically make us any more willing to shell out more to keep the NHS running or to look after pensioners in a manner befitting, but the challenge is out in the open, and the ramifications are in real time for all of us.

“Labour will not increase taxes on working people.” That’s what Keir Starmer said before he was elected as Prime Minister in 2024, and Burnham insisted this week that he will “honour” that manifesto pledge, which will mean no raising of income tax, VAT or National Insurance in this Budget. However, more borrowing would increase debt, and servicing that debt in turn gets more expensive, taking money away from vital public services, and, of course, replenishing the defence budget, which is becoming more urgent by the minute.

I’m no economist – you may have worked that out already – but I’d say that maintenance of the current fiscal situation is not an option, and a much bolder, progressive solution is required. Cuts in the welfare budget is generally the first item on the agenda. But there is an argument that, in the end, this doesn’t really save us money – it just puts more pressure elsewhere in the system. And, in any case, you can’t make poor, sick or disabled people poorer just so the Treasury can balance the books. Better to look at ending the triple-lock pension, which, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility, is responsible for half of the £31bn bill for pensions. But this also is something of a blunt instrument, and may at this stage prove to be an electoral issue too highly-charged for any government to handle.

No, if Burnham wants to stay on brand, and truly has an ambition to make the country a more equitable place, he must look at that most incendiary of solutions: a fair and reasonable property tax. The current way in which we raise tax revenue against property ownership is no longer suitable. Council tax bands were set way back in 1991, and stamp duty just penalises people who want, or need, to be mobile.

I am a house owner who was born into a culture where we were encouraged to treat our properties as security for the future. Thus, we have become a country in which wealth has increasingly flowed not from what people earn or create, but from what they happen to own (which also has a geographical imbalance).

Boomers like me – and there are around 13 million of us in the UK – have to come to terms with the fact that we have had a disproportionate share of the good times, and now we have a chance to make things better for everyone, not just for those who inherit our assets.

An intelligently-designed property tax, taking into account regional variations, is the way to do this. It will encourage downsizing among the elderly, it could, in some cases, be deferred until a property is actually sold, and it’s a tax that’s hard to dodge or avoid. You can’t hide a three-bedroom semi in the Cayman Islands. Most importantly, it doesn’t remove the incentive to go out and earn as much as you can.

Of course, this doesn’t take into account the political reality. It’s not palatable for those who are asset rich but cash poor – like those older people who are disproportionately likely to vote.

But Burnham has a chance now to explain that, in terms of economic activity, it’s one of the least damaging taxes there is. And it may be the most morally defensible way to stop the country going bankrupt.