Parliament is back – and we are already seeing a familiar pattern from Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer

Editorial: The Conservatives have made a political calculation over social care, while Labour – after some agonised soul-searching – are seeking the moral one

(Brian Adcock)

Parliament returns this week, and with it, for the first time in a long time, may come proper politics. There is no question that the social care system needs urgent reform, and there is no doubt it will be very expensive, but the question of how to pay for it is as thorny as they come.

Boris Johnson’s preferred solution is a moral outrage. When he became prime minister in July 2019, he stood outside 10 Downing Street and claimed to have a plan for social care that was ready to go. By the time he had fought and won a general election five months later, the plan had not appeared, but he did run on a manifesto commitment not to increase income tax, national insurance or VAT. Now the plan, to a certain extent, is out, and it will involve raising national insurance, via a social care surcharge.

There is almost no tax increase that can be dreamt up that is less progressive. National insurance is only paid on earnings. Even an income tax rise would affect people whose income comes from investments, or savings, or rent from properties. To raise national insurance is to directly transfer money from young people, who have comparatively little, to elderly people, who have plenty – particularly in housing wealth, though not always in readily accessible funds.

But, as Mr Johnson certainly knows, moral outrages are not necessarily political outrages. What matters to him – and this is by no means a moral outrage in itself – is whether his plan for social care will please or repel the voters he needs. He talks of “levelling up”, which has no real meaning but is taken to mean improving living standards in the once Labour, and now Conservative, northern constituencies that voted for him at the last election. Most of those constituencies are, on average, a lot older than they used to be. They have high proportions of retired homeowners who are soon to need looking after. They will not be morally outraged in the slightest.

Keir Starmer is under pressure from within his own party, and from trade unions, to introduce policies that will compel the better off, rather than already struggling workers, to fill the vast black hole in social care. But it will not be easy for him to do so. He knows he has to win back the same voters Mr Johnson is trying to keep onside, while the prime minister, in all likelihood, has it the wrong way round in social justice terms, but – yet again – the right way round politically.

He also has lessons to draw on, and very recent ones too. In 2017, Theresa May and her advisers thought she was so certain to win, against an opposition that would never be so weak again, that it was a chance to do the morally right thing regarding social care, which was to create a system by which unearned housing wealth could be used to pay for it. It was quickly branded the “dementia tax”, and it paved the way for one of the most stunning election results of all time. Johnson is unlikely to make a similar mistake.

Arguably, the moral question is not so simple either. Vast unearned housing wealth is, for the most part, also unspent. Many will not personally touch their house price wealth, but will instead pass it on to their children and grandchildren, for whom it will represent the only chance to get on the housing ladder and build a life for themselves.

For many working people, paying a bit more national insurance to cover social care will seem significantly preferable to having to pay for it by selling the family home.

That the Conservatives have made the correct political calculation, while Labour, in opposition, does some agonised soul-searching in order to find the correct moral one, should surprise no one. It is, in general terms and in normal times, to which we may finally be returning, the traditional way of things.