Will Theresa May ever resist a backlash?

Elections matter. They are fundamental to our way of life. So, while it is appropriate that the campaigns stopped on Tuesday to mourn the victims of the heinous terrorist attack in Manchester, democracy demands that they resume as quickly as possible. The terrorists must know that they will never change how our society functions.

This is an odd election. Everyone assumes they know what the result will be and the real psephological debate is over just how big the Tory majority will be. On Monday, even the most panicked Tory was only concerned about what Theresa May’s U-turn would mean for the party’s margin of victory, not the actual result. But her retreat on social care will have ramifications far beyond 8 June.

May and her team are modernisers who want to change the Tory party. But they are very different modernisers to Cameron, Osborne and the Notting Hill set. Team May is more interested in class and economics than sexuality and society. Their spirit ran through May’s manifesto. The Dilnot proposed cap on social care costs, limiting what any individual would have to pay, was rejected on the grounds that it ‘mostly benefited a small number of wealthier people’. Instead, they went for a policy that they described as ‘more equitable, within and across the generations,’ which meant that those with assets could be forced to run them down to the last £100,000 to meet the costs of their care.

This policy was a bold statement of how they wanted the Tory party to be less concerned about the worries of the better-off and less deferential to property wealth and the whole idea of inheritance. Indeed, Damian Green, one of the few Cabinet Ministers genuinely close to Mrs May, defended it by describing £100,000 as a ‘reasonable inheritance to have’.