Death tax, grief tax? Taking money from pensioners. Nonsense and people know it.

Reform called Andy Burnham’s National Care Service a death tax and a grief tax. The Conservatives said it would take money from pensioners. The Liberal Democrats pushed for action in this parliament but opposed taking money from pensioners.

Each protecting their own interests rather than thinking what’s best for the country. We need a Care Service and the Triple Lock is unaffordable.

We’ve seen all this before.

In 2010, Andy Burnham proposed a levy on estates to fund a National Care Service. The Conservatives put up posters of gravestones and called it a death tax. The policy died.

In 2017, Theresa May proposed that people fund their own care from their property. Four days later she U-turned. They’d called it the dementia tax. It cost her a majority.

In 2021, Boris Johnson got a Health and Social Care Levy onto the statute book. It was repealed within a year.

A Care Service is going to happen.

The attacks won’t land this time and the silly phrases won’t stick

This isn’t a Poll Tax moment, a Care Service and dropping the triple lock are right in principle

Burnham will still be Prime Minister after the next election

The attacks won’t land this time and the silly phrases won’t stick.

The card has been played too often. Bedroom tax. Dementia tax. Death tax. Grief tax. When every policy you dislike gets the same two-word treatment, the words stop carrying a charge. Voters have heard it, and they have noticed that the thing being attacked is usually just a policy somebody didn’t like.

Attacking this as taking money from pensioners just isn’t true. Two ratchets remain: the pension still rises by inflation or 2.5%, whichever is higher, and it is pledged to hold its value against earnings over time. Some would say Burnham wasn’t brave enough on this. A single lock would do the job that’s now required of it; the 2.5% could be removed. But it’s a harder sell to remove 2 of the 3 locks than just 1.

We know why the opposition parties take these positions. But they’re not actually in line with their own voters on this one. 82-85% of Labour, Lib Dem and Green voters support the National Care Service, 68% of Conservative voters, 65% of Reform voters. Those aren’t slender majorities. This isn’t a close call.

Even Ed Davey, who says this can’t come from the pockets of the poorest pensioners, is opposed by 67% of his own voters on the pension change itself.

Andy Burnham admitted within 24 hours that the savings from the Pension Unlock may not cover the whole cost. Good to be clear and honest, quick out of the blocks, and close down a potential line of attack.

The other thing is that Burnham carries this with passion and personal experience which previous Prime Ministers have not. Theresa May tried to fix care in 2017 as a late convert, mid-campaign, with no groundwork laid. Failed. People like and trust Andy Burnham. That really matters.

This isn’t a Poll Tax moment; a Care Service and dropping the triple lock are right in principle.

The poll tax was attacked because it was wrong in principle: the duke and the dustman paying the same. Fixing social care isn’t wrong in principle. Most people think it needs doing.

The people who think about it hardest are the ones closest to it: those already paying for care, or watching a parent’s house and savings disappear into it. They don’t need persuading that the system is broken, because they are living in the wreckage of it.

The Triple Lock has done its job and served its purpose.

Between 1980 and 2010 the state pension rose with prices only, while wages rose faster. Year after year, pensioners fell behind the people still working. By 2010 the pension was worth less against average earnings than at almost any point in modern times, and pensioner poverty was a national disgrace.

Since 2010 the basic state pension has risen by a staggering 81%. Prices have risen 56%. Unemployment benefit for working-age people has risen 41%. The full new state pension is now approaching 30% of median full-time earnings, higher relative to earnings than at any point since at least 1968. Pensioner poverty is 14%, against 20% for the population as a whole. Pensioners are no longer the poorest people in Britain.

Independent bodies have said all this: the IFS, the OBR.

Polling the day after the speech had the Pension Unlock backed 48% to 28%. Not yet a majority, but Burnham will have moved people’s positions and can continue to do so.

Burnham will still be Prime Minister after the next election.

On today’s polling Andy Burnham has a decent chance of winning outright: Labour 25.7%, Reform 23.1%, the Conservatives 20%, the Lib Dems 10.9%, the Greens 10.3%. I am not sure many people have caught up with that yet. Labour is ahead again, and Reform’s moment looks like it has passed.

If he falls short, an arrangement or a coalition with the Liberal Democrats and Burnham as Prime Minister is the most likely outcome. On care, the two parties already agree.

A government of the right is currently unlikely. Reform and the Conservatives are competing for the same voters, which splits the vote rather than combining it, and the only way round that is a pact agreed before an election. Egos, and the belief on both sides that they can win outright, will likely prevent it.

Thirty years ago, according to Alastair Campbell’s diaries, Tony Blair said this to the big players in Labour about Devolution:

I am telling you this is the way to deliver it. It’s like the minimum wage. Because of the methods and arguments adopted in the past, we have failed historically to make it happen. Emotionalism has had the upper hand. You have to root this in the pragmatic realities.

Same again now. Emotionalism has had the upper hand, and governments have failed to make logical things happen.

Sixteen years ago they called Andy Burnham’s care plan a death tax, and they killed it. It won’t happen this time.

All Burnham has to do is make the case, rooting his argument in the pragmatic realities. And he will deliver it.

𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙾𝚗𝚎 𝙼𝚊𝚗 𝚃𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚔 𝚃𝚊𝚗𝚔