One ‘dementia tax’ ought to have been enough. The Conservatives were right to identify the cost of social care as an increasingly serious problem. Using their 2017 election manifesto to suggest a solution that was both unjust and likely to hit some of their most loyal supporters (or their children) the hardest was not, however, the way to go. The Tories made many mistakes in the course of that wretched campaign, but if there was one that set them on the path to a vanished majority, the dementia tax was probably it.