Social care reform is long overdue, and Burnham is right to spend political capital fixing a system that leaves elderly people stranded in hospitals and unpaid carers earning less than 50p an hour. Delayed discharges alone cost the NHS £2.7 billion a year — that's a crisis hiding in plain sight. A National Care Service built on dignity and cross-party cooperation is exactly the bold move Britain needs.
Burnham's social care push is just recycled ideas from his time as health secretary, and an NHS-style free-at-the-point-of-use model would bake inefficiency into an already broken system. Real reform demands market-driven innovation, not more taxes — yet no one in this cross-party huddle is explaining where the money actually comes from. Shutting out Reform while cooking up another establishment fix guarantees the same cycle of failure.
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