A rare kernel of hopefully good news has been circulating the Treasury. No, we haven’t yet paid off the £2.7 trillion debt, and the state pension is still on path to imploding in a decade’s time. Instead, Britain’s most destructive and ambition-killing tax is for the chop and is to be replaced with a much more sensible system.

Property prices have risen by 259 per cent since 1997, with wages only rising by a lowly 68 per cent

Stamp Duty Land Tax has its origins in Regency England, and as the name suggests, it originally was levied on stamped documents in order to fund Britain’s war against Napoleon. In 1815, the stamp duty on a newspaper was an extortionate 4d – James Mill, father of John Stuart, wrote that the tax amounted to censorship by taxation. Thankfully, this form of journalistic

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