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Alternative options are always good.

A longer version of this thread is here, complete with statutory references and an explanation of why the analogy is so close to how social care actually works. taxpolicy.org.uk/2026/07/27/s...

Theresa May deserves far more credit than she gets for having tried to do the right thing. I hope Andy Burnham will be equally brave, and rather more successful.

3. Create a compulsory social insurance scheme, with subsidies for people on low incomes, on the model of Germany or Japan. Pick one.

2. Reduce the cost for the unlucky one in seven and raise it for everybody else, through direct taxation - as in Denmark or Sweden.

But the menu is short: 1. Keep the status quo, and accept that we all play the game, and one in seven of us loses (and potentially loses everything they have).

So what's the solution? Unfortunately I can't pretend to have an answer, not least because it's well outside my expertise (the underlying analysis behind this thread was contributed by a local authority care specialist).

Parliament legislated for a cap on lifetime care costs in the Care Act 2014. Like most legislation, it just needed a minister to make a commencement order to bring the cap into force. Unlike most legislation, no commencement order was ever made.

People who win the game or haven't started playing it also lose, because adult social care now dominates many council budgets.

This is, obviously, insane. It is also almost exactly how catastrophic adult social care costs work in England today.

9. You may lose almost everything you have ever owned. But don't worry: you get to keep £31.80 a week - don't spend it all at once.

8. Your house is in play. It doesn't count as an asset while you, your partner, or an elderly relative still lives in it. Once you have all moved out, you get twelve weeks, and then it very much counts.

7. I thought it would be fun to inject some socialism into the randomness. So about 30% of the tax paid by rich losers (who are paying in full) goes to people who also lost but don't have enough income/assets to pay themselves.

Over £23,250: you pay the whole of the monkey's number yourself, every year, until you die.

Between £14,250 and £23,250: you pay £1 a week for every £250 you have over £14,250. Your council pays the rest.

6. If your income won't cover the tax - and it probably won't - you have to sell stuff to fund it. Under £14,250 of assets: your council pays the tax instead of you. Which of course goes onto everybody's council tax.

5. Half of all players are finished inside fifteen months. But more than a quarter keep spinning for over three years, and some more than twenty. Each year, the monkey throws a new dart, and you get a new bill.

4. A monkey throws a dart (with your name on it) at a board full of numbers. It lands somewhere between £58,000 and £66,000 - and that's your tax bill for that year.

3. An official decides whether to give you a wildcard that will exempt you from the tax. Some officials hand out wildcards 3% of the time; others 60%. A wildcard = you're exempt from the tax Otherwise: time to pay.

2. You are not told when. The tax might start at 68. It might start at 95. It might start the week after your wife dies. I know, but you don't. There's no way to find out in advance, and no way to insure against it.