Boris Johnson must once again be grateful for the lack of serious opposition

Editorial: As with Brexit, the prime minister’s opponents cannot coalesce around a single unifying alternative to his social care plan

Will it be a hat-trick of broken promises from Boris Johnson? (Dave Brown)

Even by the standards of this government, scrapping two key manifesto commitments in the course of a single afternoon, on tax and the pensions “triple lock”, is a bit much. They were, of course, widely trailed and spun in the preceding days, if not weeks, to soften the blow to Conservative MPs’ pride (and their prospects in marginal constituencies).

Few seriously thought that the aberrant behaviour of wages after the pandemic could really justify an 8 per cent or so hike in the old age pension, welcome though it would have been. The news was delivered by the embodiment of emollience herself, Therese Coffey, who has made a fine job of keeping social security (mostly) out of the headlines.

By contrast, there was a certain elegant audacity in Boris Johnson’s admission that his solemn manifesto pledge on national insurance was to be tossed aside. The pandemic provided an ideal alibi, but still he presented his latest U-turn as an almost heroic act. He was, he claimed, the first prime minister to tackle the problem rather than duck it, and the first to actually put any kind of plan before the House of Commons.

It almost feels like poor taste to point out that his plan is at least two years late, and to question exactly why he once said that he could reform long-term care with no need to raise tax on income. Or mention that any rise in employers’ national insurance contributions (NIC) used to be condemned by Tories as an intolerable attack on job creation and prosperity. The timing of Mr Johnson’s statement must have delayed his lunch, but he had plenty of words to eat between meals.

Mr Johnson was also blessed, not for the first time, in his opponents. There are those, on his side, who oppose tax and national insurance rises as a matter of principle. Others propose individuals should purchase insurance policies for their old age, seemingly unaware that insurers won’t cover dementia. On the opposition benches, they want different taxes to rise, or death duties and inheritance taxes on the rich to even the burdens.

As with Brexit, Mr Johnson’s opponents cannot coalesce around a single unifying alternative, and thus his policy will, after much fuss, pass because there is no alternative that commands a majority in the Commons.

Nor did he have that much trouble from Labour. He had only to repeat the question “what would you do?” and time and again Keir Starmer was vanquished, if not speechless. The differences between the two front benches on funding long-term care are nowhere near as large as either side would care to admit.

The more radical alternative approach to the care crisis is being argued for by the alternative leader of the opposition, Andy Burnham. As it happens, Mr Burnham was the last Labour health secretary, and back in 2010 he and the Gordon Brown government suggested a different way forward. Rather than tax the living, old or young, why not tax the dead? On the well-founded principle that “you can’t take it with you”, they proposed levying a progressive rate of inheritance tax on estates, posthumously paying for care through social insurance, analogous to the way the living pay for the system of social health insurance we know as the NHS. It would be fairer, no one would have to sell their homes, and it would preserve the principle of universality. But asking Mr Johnson to admit that Mr Burnham and Mr Brown were right all along was too much to expect.

In the end, it may actually turn out to be a hat-trick of broken promises, because the increase in national insurance and one-off savings on the retirement pension won’t be enough to fix the long-term care crisis “once and for all”, as Mr Johnson once promised. By the time that becomes apparent, though, Mr Johnson will have departed for a sprightly and well-funded retirement himself.