‘Overcompensating” is common in politics.

When MPs see electoral damage from a policy, they can react by reaching for a seemingly popular, yet misguided, alternative. That is surely the context for new Conservative thinking on funding elderly social care.

The party’s 2017 manifesto proposed changes to the current “asset floor” system that produced a political firestorm, arguably costing them a majority in the election. Care users were to fund their own residential or domiciliary care by drawing down wealth, until their assets depleted to £100,000. Below that, government spending would finance basic care. This proposal was more generous than the current system for many (an asset floor of £23,250 operates for residential care today), equitable across care types, and with a bill deferrable to end of life. But commentators and the opposition, playing on ignorance of the status quo, dubbed it a “dementia tax.” The idea sank.

Now some Tories are pivoting to a different but worse proposal. Theresa May ally Damian Green recommends a new “universal care entitlement” (UCE), modelled on the state pension. Individuals would be encouraged to finance add-ons and provide funds for better-than-standard care. But today’s means-tested system would be replaced by central government financing basic care for all who need it. That represents a significant shift in funding responsibility from individuals to taxpayers.