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Since Brexit, the Conservative party has been “doubling down on a shrinking demographic”, its voter base is “diminishing one funeral at a time” as it bets “on the past against the future”. So declares Andrew Cooper, a former Downing Street and remain campaign strategist.
His is a values argument based on the political and cultural divide Brexit exposed between younger and older voters, a gap likely to widen with Rishi Sunak’s retreat from net zero commitments. On the latter though, the Tories are gambling that they can separate ordinary hard-pressed voters from the idealists. But an even more powerful electoral juggernaut is thundering towards the Conservative party. Leading figures fret over it but they are standing frozen in its path. This greater threat is the breakdown of the economic promise that reeled in voters as they got older.
In 2017, the age at which people were more likely to vote Conservative than Labour rose to 47. By 2019, the crossover age had been clawed back to 39. But today the over-65s are the only age group with whom Tories enjoy a polling lead. Millennials, the oldest of whom have turned 40, are now the largest group in the population. Research for the think-tank Onward found only 21 per cent of them would vote Tory.
The party’s political values are alienating for many under-45s. Aside from Brexit and net zero targets there is also the hostile tone towards universities and graduates, even though a third of adults now boast a degree or equivalent. Age and education are today the best predictors of voting intention.
In the past, identifying as the party of aspiration helped the Tories surmount such differences. As people progressed financially, got a decent job, bought a home and started a family they found themselves on the blue brick road. This path has been broken by salary stagnation and high house prices. In 1997, two-thirds of 35- to 44-year-olds had a mortgage. By 2017 that figure was down to half. In England, the percentage of private renters in that age group rose from 8.2 to 27.6 per cent over the same period. Small wonder the crossover age is rising.
Spending and public policy remain skewed towards those older voters with assets — so a falling percentage of working age citizens are bearing more of the costs of an ageing population. Tories see the trap. Last week Tom Tugendhat, the security minister, warned colleagues they could no longer “sit around” and wait for voters to “become Conservative at 40”. That once-clear path is being eschewed by a generation waiting longer or moving further for a home, hammered by childcare costs, higher taxes and rising rents and wondering how they can enjoy the life their parents took for granted.
Michael Gove, the levelling-up secretary, argues: “The structure of our society means that the concentrated influence of ‘those who have’ can sometimes act as a block on the aspirations and opportunities of ‘those who aspire’.” He has lobbied the chancellor on the case for some form of wealth tax on “rentiers” extracting income from assets. This seems reckless so close to an election but he is right that these are issues his party must confront.
Gove is currently fighting to deliver a manifesto pledge to give more security to tenants by ending no-fault evictions. Yet his bill is facing delay and obstruction from MPs more focused on the needs of landlords. With a rising number of renters, this is the kind of measure that signals to younger, asset-poor voters whose side you are on.
Tories fixate on the need for more houses but by blocking essential planning reform, its Nimby MPs refused to will the means. Until recently, the main Conservative offering was to partially underwrite loans for first-time buyers — a measure that supported prices rather than increasing supply. Gove’s latest move is to ease river pollution rules which obstruct housebuilding.
Lord True, the Leader of the Lords, chaired a 2019 parliamentary inquiry on intergenerational fairness which recommended shifting spending and social priorities. Ideas included planning reform to boost housebuilding, scrapping the triple lock on pensions and just uprating them in line with earnings, means-testing other pensioner benefits and requiring better-off pensioners to pay national insurance if they are still working. The Tories have expanded public funding for child care and promoted skills training. But their political instincts and reliance on older voters are pulling them away from those whose votes they will soon need.
Sunak’s recent openness to rethinking the triple lock owes more to financial pressures and looks like dangerous politics ahead of a difficult election. But it is a recognition that some savings must fall on older voters.
The Tories might learn from the approach that party leaders took to northern voters in the past decade. Recognising that they faced becoming a southern party, senior ministers like George Osborne developed strategies to increase their appeal. Step one was paying heed to and prioritising the concerns of the north. It may be unlikely before the election but a similar rethink is necessary on intergenerational fairness. Aside from being electorally essential, it is also right.
The bitter truth for Tories is that they have lost the economic hook that pulled in those younger voters while doubling down on political positions that alienate a significant portion of them. One of the two may be manageable. Together they are indeed a bet on the past.