RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Stop Labour's Mansion Tax Stasi crawling Through The Keyhole

Through The Keyhole was a popular television panel show introduced by David Frost and featuring a regular cast of celebrities, including Chris Tarrant, Eve Pollard and Kenneth Williams.Every week, Loyd Grossman would be given the keys to the homes of well-known personalities and the panel had to guess who owned them.Grossman would poke and probe around the property looking for clues to the identity of the owner, who could be an actor, comedian, singer or sportsman.One episode might spotlight Jeffrey Archer's luxury apartment on the River Thames, the next newspaper tycoon Robert Maxwell's Oxfordshire pile, another DJ Tony Blackburn's latest love nest.Few of the properties featured were from the lower end of the market. And much of the fun to be had was marvelling at the hideous decor choices made by those with more money than taste.While most of them were high-end, you'd occasionally get a glimpse inside a fixer-upper being renovated by a young, up-and-coming soap star.The show ran on ITV from 1987 to 1996, before transferring first to Sky and then the BBC, where it limped on until 2008. There have been a couple of revivals since but none recaptured the magic of the original.Now though, there is a chance that Through The Keyhole could return with a new format, courtesy of our money-grabbing Labour Government. Plans have just been revealed to send an army of inspectors into homes to set the level of 'mansion tax' owners must pay. Sir David Frost, left, hosted Through The Keyhole, which gave an insight into the homes of well-known personalities, with Loyd Grossman, right, who would be given the keys Labour always seems to have a down on private property, which is presumably why Andy Pandy pines for the 'good old days' when working people knew their place and lived in council houses, writes Richard LittlejohnIn last year's Budget, Rachel From Complaints announced that people who live in high-value flats and houses would be hit with an annual council tax surcharge of between £2,500 and £7,500 – whether they can afford it or not.The threshold was originally set at £2million but the head of the Valuation Office told MPs earlier this year that properties priced at £1.5million were being 're-assessed' and could also be included.Yes, I know that £1.5million sounds a great deal of money. It is, especially if you live in an area where typical house prices reach nowhere near that level.But in London and the South East – now firmly in the sights of Labour's 'soak the rich' class warriors – one-and-a-half mill doesn't buy you a palace.And speaking of fixer-uppers, here's a 'for instance'.In 1985, we bought a modest, turn-of-the-century terraced house in a not-especially-fashionable north London suburb, with a monster mortgage which stretched our finances to breaking point.It cost £95,000, needed significant remedial work and was nobody's idea of a 'mansion'.To put things in perspective, the lovely, older couple next door – nursing sister Eileen and barman John – paid just £4,000 when they bought their house a couple of decades earlier.We moved out 12 years later, selling for just shy of £250,000. Today, similar homes in the area are being advertised for sale at £1,900,000, which takes them into 'mansion tax' territory, especially if the threshold is lowered to £1.5m.Eileen and John are sadly no longer with us, but there are plenty of older people on fixed incomes still living in the homes they bought donkey's years ago for a few thousand pounds, yet are worth a small fortune on the open market. They are now considered by Labour to be living in 'mansions' and therefore ripe for the plucking.How the hell is someone on a pension supposed to come up with a minimum £2,500 a year, on top of all the other bills, including the existing sky-high council tax in some of the far-Left boroughs?It's not just the elderly, either. The incomes of couples raising families in the teeth of the ever-rising cost of living have to no extent kept pace with house price inflation. They may be worth £1.5million or £2million on paper, but they're mortgaged up to the hilt and are already paying the highest taxes since the Second World War.But in Burnham's Britain, they are regarded as 'rich' and therefore fair game to be bled dry in order to feed Labour's welfare monster, buying bigger TVs for layabouts and keeping migrants here illegally in the comfort to which they believe they are entitled.The most outrageous, tyrannical aspect of all this is the plan to give valuation inspectors – the so-called 'mansion tax police' – powers to enter our homes and conduct 'internal inspections'.Anybody who refuses admission to these Stasi-style goons will face a fine of up to £200.So if you don't want some jumped-up jobsworth in a hi-viz jacket measuring your downstairs loo, nosing around in your knicker drawer and sifting through your cupboards, you'll be landed with a criminal record.MPs have been told that these inspections will have to be made regularly to ensure valuations are kept up to date. Labour's politics of resentment even includes councils launching drones to measure patios and back gardens, so that extra taxes can be slapped on anyone using a garden shed as a home office or gym.(This at a time when the Government is paying the electricity and gas bills of civil servants working from home. No doubt we'll soon be expected to pay for their Hobnobs and Sky TV subscriptions, too.)Labour always seems to have a down on private property, which is presumably why Andy Pandy pines for the 'good old days' when working people knew their place and lived in council houses, before the liberating home-owning revolution under Margaret Thatcher which freed millions from being trapped under the Town Hall yoke.When Two Jags was in charge of housing, he came up with a scheme to levy extra taxes on homes with a 'nice view', situated in a sleepy cul-de-sac, or next to a park or golf course.The 'mansion tax' tyranny springs from the same far-Left mindset, which seeks to punish those who have got on in life through talent and hard work, forcing them to fund the lifestyles of the workshy, those with pretend illnesses such as 'anxiety' and so-called 'asylum seekers' who have no right to be here.If they equip the Mansion Tax Stasi with the same kind of body-cams worn by police officers, it could provide the video for a brand new incarnation of Through The Keyhole.David Frost has gone to that big TV studio in the sky, but his job as host could be taken by Burnham himself, far-Left LBC rent-a-gob Jimmy O'Brien, or one of those unfunny Left-wing comedians, such as Nish Kumar (whoever he is), who turn up on every BBC 'satirical' quiz show.Loyd Grossman's role could be filled by Labour-supporter Steve Coogan, last seen campaigning for Andy Pandy in Makerfield. Replacing Chris Tarrant, Eve Pollard and the late Kenneth Williams, the panel could comprise Zack Polanski, Angry Ginge Rayner and Jeremy Corbyn.Rather than the gentle reveal, the owner of the 'mansion' in question would be named and shamed and roundly booed by the audience, while being forced to write out a cheque for anything up to £7,500.Which greedy rich bastard lives in a house he doesn't deserve?Andy, it's owver to yoo...