TODAY could be a big day in this history of this Government. Will Boris Johnson break a manifesto commitment not to raise taxes by putting one per cent or more on national insurance to pay for social care.

Some Conservatives, like Bishop Auckland MP Dehenna Davison and Dominic Cummings, argue that this would be electoral suicide: you can’t make a big promise at an election and break it two years later. How will the public view the next Tory manifesto if it knows promises are made to be broken?

But Boris Johnson also promised two years ago that he had a plan to fix social care, and it would be just as damaging for him to duck that issue.

To resolve social care needs money. Some on the right are floating the idea of a private insurance scheme, but that would undermine the basics of the NHS: why would cancer sufferers get their care on the NHS when dementia sufferers would be expected to have insurance to cover their care or be forced to sell their homes? That’s not fair.

Raising national insurance isn’t really fair either as its burden falls heaviest on the young and the lower paid.

Therefore, unless Chancellor Rishi Sunak can magic up some new formula, the fairest way is to raise income tax.

The Tories have to make a decision about which way forward will do the least damage to their brand and hope the public will give them credit for tackling one of the biggest domestic issues of the age.