How should @KemiBadenoch approach social care? + @andyburnham's character, political needs and experience, in Manchester and as Health Secretary under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, prejudice him in favour of a National Care Service along the lines of the National Health Service. However, what he announced yesterday seems to be a more modest National Personal Care Service for older people - as in Scotland. “Hotel charges” apparently won’t be covered, nor will children and there is a question mark over working age disabled adults - all not at all like the NHS in England. Then there is the inconvenient truth that most social care is delivered outside the public sector. @thetimes has reported No 10 sources saying @andyburnham does not want taxpayer money subsidising large private-equity returns and that profit-making chains may be kept out of new funding. tinyurl.com/mtfc53uu What’s @andyburnham's plan for maintaining investment, confidence and provision from profit-making providers amidst this turbulence? All in all, @andyburnham 's triple lock scheme wouldn’t cover the cost of a full National Care Service in the next parliament, and may not even cover a narrower free-personal-care version until well into the 2030s. (The IFS says the early-year savings are small and will not, on their own, fund a universal free system in the next parliament (tinyurl.com/4k995hf8). There is simply no imaginable universe in which @KemiBadenoch or @Nigel_Farage are going to back a vague scheme in which reform of the triple lock would be swallowed up by unknown costs and this uncertainty - paid for by their voters with higher taxes on savings or pensions or inheritance. And nor should they… …Let alone when @andyburnham had nothing to say about defence spending, spending control and immigration control - as the crisis in the Gulf continues, yields rise and interest rates and inflation are due to rise. We await the Budget. And then the @Casey_Review which seems to have ownership of the project. So both @Nigel_Farage and @KemiBadenoch will tear into @andyburnham's plan such as it is and his triple lock proposal such as it is - whatever members of the latter’s Shadow Cabinet may have said and @Farage himself may have said. (tinyurl.com/ddkumvue) That’s just how it is. No good arguing about it. Done and dusted. The question for @KemiBadenoch is whether like @Nigel_Farage she will simply campaign against death taxes or also look for a policy. Here is one - or at least its beginnings. She could show positive intent and continue to offer talks with @andyburnham - but only in the context of her economic plan to save some £50 billion a year mostly from welfare with, from each pound saved, at least half of the saving going towards cutting the deficit, with the rest funding tax cuts or priorities such as raising defence spending. tinyurl.com/3993zcs4 + @Burnham is unlikely to engage on that basis - so having demonstrated goodwill and advertised her policy she could do a lot worse than ask her new Shadow Health Secretary, @DamianHinds , to have a word with such expert organisations as the @SocialCareUK. His (and my) former colleague @DamianGreen has previously made suggestions for reform to Casey about changes the Government could make now with limited upfront cost.. …For example: “proper, equal, joint budgeting, commissioning and service design between the care sector and the NHS. Too often greater integration has meant greater emphasis on NHS needs with care left as the poor relation.” The @SocialCareUK also supports “a national assessment to say how what amount of state support a person should get, depending on the seriousness of the care need”, “a national “My Care” online portal, a professional registration scheme for care workers to help raise their status, the sector to access lower-cost capital through the British Business Bank and, more ambitiously, taking funding away from Council Tax and make it national. Finally, @DamianGreen moots a a national assessment to establish how what amount of state support a person should get, depending on the seriousness of the care need - which people and families should be allowed to top up. Essentially, @DamianGreen and others are contributing to the ancient dispute between Labour and the Conservatives since at least the age of Henry Willink, Churchill’s wartime Minister of Health, and his 1944 White Paper A National Health Service, about the role of the state. tinyurl.com/v82e7rx7 Is it the insurer of last resort providing a decent floor, or the common provider of the service? Should social care be provided on a basis more like the state pension or state healthcare? Without getting too Tory about it, the @DamianGreen scheme has a Disraeli element to it (the floor provided by the state) and a Thatcher element - the freedom for families and people to top up (the market element, if you like). + @KemiBadenoch , @DamianHinds and @griffitha could inch towards saying that once the last has got a grip on the public finances and got defence spending on track to three per cent of GDP by 2030 (a long shot), the Conservatives would be willing to look at @DamianGreen's scheme - as outlined earlier for @CPSThinkTank . Obviously, the bond markets, political vicissitudes and above all the need to get our borders and spending controlled may torpedo all this. And @Badenoch may prefer to double down on her core messages of leaving the ECHR and abandoning the Net Zero while developing her economic message and cut-through.