Keir Starmer’s government can’t leave the urgent question of how social care will be funded to yet another commission

Politicians from different parties offer up their ideas at election time, citizens vote for their preferred option, and a government is formed. That is how democracy is supposed to work. Sometimes it feels as if the British political system has never been more distant from this ideal.

From the Conservatives, we’ve had years of populism: the dishonest idea that Brexit was somehow the answer to all the longstanding structural challenges facing the UK. It didn’t deliver and they were punished accordingly. The Labour party, on the other hand, ran an election campaign designed to translate widespread disaffection with the Conservatives into the maximum number of votes by saying very little about what they would do about the pressing problems that would face them in government. It worked, but has left them hamstrung when it comes to the tough choices facing a country that is no longer a global economic powerhouse, and that is confronting the fiscal reality of an ageing population and a declining birthrate.