BIRMINGHAM, England — Andy Burnham has laid a social care trap for Britain’s next general election. The Conservatives think they can waltz right past it.
Three members of Kemi Badenoch’s shadow Cabinet said the party could opt not to unveil a major care offer of its own by the time the next election rolls around — in the hope the Labour prime minister’s proposals fall apart.
“I remind you that in 2017, Labour had nothing on social care, and they were the beneficiaries of our disaster,” said one opposition frontbencher, in reference to reform plans then-Prime Minister Theresa May ended up ditching mid-election campaign after a public backlash. The person was granted anonymity, like others in this article, to discuss internal policy development.
There’s a wide political consensus that England’s status quo on adult social care is awful. Care, which includes support for people in the final years of their lives, can be inadequate and costly, and family homes are sold off to fund essential help.
But political controversy has long greeted attempts at reform — leaving the issue unresolved.
Burnham used his first conference speech as Labour leader in Liverpool last week to touch three live wires in British politics: EU membership, electoral reform and changing state pensions protections to help fund a social care overhaul.
A second member of the shadow Cabinet admitted the country is “completely f–ked” unless the cost of dying is rectified — but downplayed the likelihood of the Tories offering real reform.
“We will have things to say about all these things,” they added. “I don’t think they will be the centerpiece of our offer at the election.”
Even trying to play it safe would open up a major ideological divide in British politics, teeing up a battle over how far the state should intervene to tackle an issue Burnham has vowed to stake his premiership on.
And Burnham’s gambit — which involves a change to the previously sacred “triple lock” on state pensions — has already opened up rifts in the Conservative Party over whether it should back change.
“No policy is still a policy”
For the prime minister, establishing a “national care service” is a long-running moral crusade — one he’s driving forward with raw emotion after he lost his father to Alzheimer’s last month.
But the politics of his move cannot be ignored either.
Conservative Party Leader Kemi Badenoch and former Chancellor Jeremy Hunt in Godalming, England, on Feb. 9, 2026. | Carl Court/Getty ImagesThe “triple lock” on pensions is sacrosanct to many Conservatives, who introduced it back in 2011. Increasing state pensions by the highest of the rate of inflation, 2.5% or average earnings was designed to make retirees — a Tory-leaning segment of society — better off.
But others in the party believe the ballooning cost of the U.K. welfare bill — more than half of which goes on pensions — is utterly unsustainable.
Burnham proposed weakening the third prong of the triple lock — after the next general election, due by 2029 — to save an estimated £15 billion a year by 2040. The savings would be funneled into a pending plan to reform social care.
That opens a dividing line among senior figures in the Conservatives.
Former Chancellor Jeremy Hunt and serving Shadow Foreign Secretary Tom Tugendhat have both publicly suggested maintaining the lock is unsustainable.
Even though the changes won’t be enacted until 2030, Labour will seek to pass legislation on them before the next election. Tory party enforcers recognize the risk of a Commons vote even as they seek to play it down.
“I’m sure there will be lots of conversations had with Jeremy [Hunt], and Jeremy is ultimately a loyal Conservative,” said a third shadow Cabinet member, who also spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss policy planning. “I think he’ll swing in behind it.”
Tugendhat is expected to swallow his opposition now he’s joined Badenoch’s top team and Hunt said he would vote with the Tories because he’s against the triple lock on the grounds he wants to reduce borrowing — but doesn’t see Labour’s “more expensive” proposal as a remedy.
But even if the Tories get through such a vote unscathed, a financial row is coming down the tracks.
Badenoch, the party leader, has described maintaining the triple lock as “current” Conservative policy and in the “draft manifesto.” If it stays there, the party will have to set out where they will find billions of pounds to foot the bill of reversing the Labour policy.
The Conservative strategy right now is to downplay the purported savings Burnham reckons can be found by the triple lock tinkering — and instead insist they can find many more billions by reducing the working age welfare bill.
Marginal gains
As the second shadow Cabinet minister put it, “fiddling in the margins” won’t find the money to fulfill a proper overhaul to social care. They believe Burnham’s “bulls–t” will be exposed as having many more holes over time.
Shadow Foreign Secretary Tom Tugendhat, who is one of the senior Tories who has publicly suggested maintaining the lock is unsustainable, at the 2026 Concordia Annual Summit in New York on Sept. 22. | Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Concordia SummitEither way, the heat of an election campaign may force the Conservatives to detail what they will — or won’t — do in response to the government’s gambit.
“No policy is still a policy,” said the third shadow Cabinet minister, arguing they could duck going into the election with their own distinct plan to change the status quo.
“We’d need to explain what we’re doing and why we’re doing it,” they added. “But ultimately personal care is something we’ve all got responsibility for through our lives.”
Not all Conservatives are on board with this approach. A fourth shadow Cabinet member acknowledged social care is “a delicate subject” for the party but added: “When we go into an election we need to be giving people something about all the big things in their lives.”
That would open up a sharp dividing line between the parties of the left and the right — on just how far the state should go in aiding or interfering in people’s lives.
And that is a battle that both Labour under Burnham, who is promising greater public control for key utilities, and the Tories under Badenoch, a self-declared “classic old-school Conservative” who wants a smaller state, are spoiling to have.
“Burnham has almost expressly set it up as a battle between the politics of the 1970s against the politics and economics and the philosophy of the 1980s,” said a fifth Cabinet minister.
“We’ve tried both, and we know which works economically and we know which works politically — and it’s not the 1970s. So that’s a battle we will relish.”