Will David Cameron slot in the missing piece of Beveridge's jigsaw? With three-quarters of elderly people needing some social care, and one in 10 facing costs of more than £100,000, the Dilnot formula was greeted with near-universal rapture by the main political parties as well as charities and think tanks. It was then promptly kicked into the long grass, where it has lain dormant ever since. Now, I understand, the Government is finally poised to "do Dilnot" as the centrepiece of the delayed mid-term Coalition review, scheduled for mid-January. "It is looking very promising," says one insider, who thinks that ministers on both sides "have reached the point of no return." A government source confirms that the Coalition is all set to move on Dilnot within the next few weeks, and those involved in the plan's revival suggest that the cap is likely to be set at £50,000 - a level that Mr Dilnot could endorse. That would mean the cost to the Treasury, first estimated at an annual £1.7 billion, would be around £750 million for each of the first three years. Widespread reports of George Osborne's obduracy were mistaken, according to insiders who say the prime obstacle was Oliver Letwin's alleged reluctance to see the state extend its reach. Even with all objections removed, it is impossible to rule out last-minute hitches. As one campaigner says: "This has moved into a good place, but it's a long and winding road." Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, whose chief attribute once amounted to not being Andrew Lansley, has sounded supportive; Norman Lamb, for the Lib Dems, is a cheerleader, and Mr Dilnot is said to be very optimistic. Paul Burstow, the former Lib Dem minister and a tireless campaigner, believes that "it is now looking promising." Nothing, he adds, "could be more fitting for a coalition to fix." If these hopes are fulfilled, a draft Bill will be fleshed out, and Britain could have a social care system that will transform thousands of lives up and running before the 2015 election. That result would be political stardust, with the vital grey vote impressed by the most radical social reform in years, and with a battered Government rebooted. The Coalition, already tested to its limits, faces more ructions tomorrow. If David Cameron takes the bold and honourable course of withstanding statutory regulation and upholding a free press when the Leveson report appears tomorrow, he will face a lonely battle against the Lib Dems and Labour, who have unwisely appeared to endorse Lord Leveson's conclusions without actually seeing them. Doing Dilnot might further wrongfoot Labour, some of whose key figures think claiming to be the sole defender of the NHS will clinch victory in 2015. By contrast, Liz Kendall, the shadow care minister, warned in a sober and enlightened speech last week of the difficulties facing a health service at a cliff edge. Labour, she said, "will not have a policy of blanket opposition to hospital reconfigurations." In other words, expect closures. Ms Kendall also writes in a new Fabian study of the Beveridge inheritance that the challenges of a greying nation require "as great a revolution" as the one he instigated. The logic of that argument decrees that Labour would also have to sign up to a decent Coalition offer to the elderly. Seventy years after Beveridge, other reports thud on to ministers" desks. Today the King's Fund think tank publishes its mid-term report on Coalition health policy, warning of big risks ahead. In another part of town, Demos launches a pamphlet arguing that, in order to tackle poverty, the Government must better understand it. While these studies are all, in their different ways, a lament for Beveridge, let us not get misty-eyed. Even in the hopeful days of 1942, when Churchill foresaw the beginning of the end of war, there was no golden era of political harmony. In a speech earlier this year, the shadow work and pensions secretary, Liam Byrne, recalled that Beveridge wept when he was appointed to look into social insurance at the suggestion of a hostile Ernest Bevin, who later derided the fledgling NHS as "a social ambulance scheme." Churchill's own recalcitrance crumbled only after Clement Attlee warned him that disaster would ensue "unless the government is... as courageous in planning for peace as it has been in carrying on the war." Seventy years on, armed conflict has been replaced by the bloodless battle against financial catastrophe, exacerbated by demographic change. The modern casualties are an ageing population, condemned too often, in an age of privilege and wealth, to live in conditions that no civilised nation should sanction. Their fate, whether endured in grim institutions, forbidding wards or in the cold comfort of their lonely homes, should shame us all. At last a Coalition with no great track record of caring for the sick, the old and the infirm appears to be on the verge of completing the Beveridge revolution. Every human and economic imperative makes this a chance that no sane government should dare to miss.