This time, it's personal: Burnham bids to break a legacy of failure

For Andy Burnham, tackling the crisis in social care is personal.

His father Roy has Alzheimer's, is in a care home and – Burnham has revealed – doesn't know his son has become prime minister.

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Speaking of the family's heartbreak, Burnham said when he became PM last week: "That's a sadness because he would be (proud)."

And fixing social care, for the new prime minister, is also unfinished business. He says he'll "expend quite a lot of political capital" on the challenge ahead.

On past evidence, he'll need to.

Two years ago, when Mr Burnham was standing for re-election as Greater Manchester mayor, he also spoke about his father's Alzheimer's and the social care crisis.

"There's only one answer: the political parties have to show courage on this issue and fix social care properly," he said. "And I put forward a plan for that 14 years ago."

Indeed he did. But ever since Mr Burnham, as health secretary, published a white paper "Building the National Care Service", a political consensus has proved hopelessly elusive.

Let's see if the PM's "new kind of politics" can bring about a breakthrough. He's invited Kemi Badenoch and Sir Ed Davey for talks on Wednesday. Good luck with that.

The Tory leader is sending shadow health secretary Stuart Andrew, saying she's having "pre-planned minor surgery" and complaining about only 18 hours' notice.

"It's almost like it's only being done for show," said a Tory source. Well, steady on, Kemi, Mr Burnham has only been PM for just over a week.

A legacy of failure

Back in 2010, Mr Burnham's plans were denounced by the Conservatives as a "death tax", and when David Cameron's coalition government took office, they were scrapped.

Ironically, now Lord Cameron is president of Alzheimer's Research UK; he's called for a solution and admitted, in 2023, that Tory governments had failed to cut the "catastrophic costs" of social care.

That's certainly true. Theresa May's attempts to solve the crisis collapsed in chaos, falling apart spectacularly during her ill-fated 2017 general election campaign, when the Tories lost their Commons majority.

She'd proposed raising the threshold for people paying for their own care from the £23,250 set by the coalition government in 2014 to £100,000. But that plan was condemned as a "dementia tax".

That's because it was claimed it discriminated against people who required long-term residential care, such as those with dementia.

During a disastrous news conference in the 2017 campaign, she shouted, "Nothing has changed!", despite announcing a new cap on social care costs, which she claimed was not a U-turn but a clarification.

In 2021, it was Boris Johnson's turn to seek a solution, promising a once-in-a-generation shake-up funded by rises in national insurance. But that was sunk by a backlash of Tory grandees.

Former chancellors Philip Hammond, Kenneth Clarke and Norman Lamont attacked his "health and social care levy", while Sir John Major called it "regressive" and Sir John Redwood said it was "stupid".

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Rishi Sunak also proposed a national insurance increase, but in 2023 his chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, a former health secretary, was forced to retreat and postpone the plan for two years.

Sir Keir Starmer, typically, didn't come up with any proposals in his two years as PM, instead setting up a commission under ace troubleshooter Baroness Louise Casey. How very Keir.

What a legacy of failure over nearly two decades. A legacy that suggests Mr Burnham has a massive task if he is to succeed where up to six prime ministers have failed.

(c) Sky News 2026: This time, it's personal: Burnham bids to break a legacy of failure