The Tories and demographics

There is no doubt the Tories are riding high and in all likelihood will win the next election.  But their success lies primarily with the pro brexit baby boomers and white working class.  Both of these are rapidly shrinking groups.    If liberal left could put aside their differences and combine they would clean up in the mid term with a large majority amongst the middle class Gen X and younger plus minorities. 

Could it be that once people leave university and actually have a job, mortgage to pay and family to feed, they start to care more about real-world policies than fashionable liberal left wokeism?

Dream on m7. The problem is that genX is getting older and wealthier and will itself continue to turn more towards the tozzas (especially if the lib left keep woke/gender/identity/race/metro issues at the top of their agenda). 

theRealist, that is true of the pre Brexit conservative party.   This iteration is however primarily culturally driven and doesnt appear to give a fvck about the economy or business as Brexit demonstrates.

😂, i need to dream on?

there’s about a thousand studies showing the adage of people becoming conservative as they age stopped around about the millennium.

ever since then the contract between old and young has been broken. if anything, ppl in their 30s and early 40s r more left wing than they were at university

and there isn’t a single study suggesting the opposite, tho i am happy for u to show me an exception to prove the rule

ur mistaken belief is nothing more than a tozza wet dream. not grounded in reality and it’s going to be really messy for u when u wake up

Yep this idea of Gen X waiting over the hill like Labour reinforcements to a future battle is nonsense.

A because people frequently become more conservative when they get older.

B because huge numbers of non-student young Brits would vote Tory anyway.

86% of the UK is white. That’s not going down significantly any time soon. Yes the trad working class jobs might have moved from a factory to an office or car showroom but we’re not talking a huge change in demographics. 

The records show the Tories are no more economically competent than Labour. The Tories (and Blair did this very well) however are playing the aspirational card much better at the moment. Chuck in Brexit and identity politics playing to the northern working class. A winning combo for the Tories.

The Labour studes at Uni were always an unpleasant lot though.

Anyone involved in politics at all was utterly, utterly deplorable. The reasons were different, depending on the party affiliation, but the net net was the same. Arseholes - all. 

The Tories are not the GOP. They are not small state, they don’t tote guns and they aren’t introspective.

They appeal to the same demographic as the GOP but they are also the ‘least bad choice’ to a huge range of status quo, middle class people who in the States would happily vote Dem.

Blair got that vote in the 90s but Labour aren’t getting near it. Neither Corbyn-style, hard left economics or identity politics are vote winners. 

Yep this idea of Gen X waiting over the hill like Labour reinforcements to a future battle is nonsense.

The generation that voted to remain in the EU in 1975 also voted to leave in 2016.  People change, but people also move so the people leaving London change the demographics and voting patterns of the places they move to.  Look at Brighton.

The idea that either (a) Tory voters will die; or (b) why don't all the not Tories play together because they're all Labour subsidiaries really, and then the Tories will lose is pretty weak thinking.

The anti-racist thing plays fooking badly in Britain. Not because the British are racist but because it basically says that not being racist isn’t enough.

 

The huge and under-discussed element to this is these young Labour voters are in all the wrong places.

The red wall was built on the employees of manufacturing and extractive industries that populated it, but those jobs are gone. 

These red wall is now populated by people who own their homes and have fixed pension incomes. Whatever their affiliation is with what we consider to be culturally "working class", in terms of their actual material interests they simply are not. They are conservatives. 

Meanwhile the actual working young in insecure jobs and insecure housing have moved wholesale to where the jobs in the modern British economy are - service sector roles in cities. So we get bigger and bigger Labour majorities in concentrated urban constituencies while the Tories while hoover up everything in between, and this is going to continue for quite a while yet. 

I don't really know what the answer to that is. 

I think this is a delusional view. Things used to be like this 

FAR RIGHT          RIGHT               CENTRE            LEFT                   FAR LEFT

BNP                   UKIP      Conservative LD New Labour Labour         Communists

Now

                      ERG          C o n s e r v a t i v e      LD       Labour        Momemtum

For all the "Labour should go back to their roots" BS on here, elections are won by getting the people in the middle. Starmer is Blairite, but he is in charge of a massively left wing unelectable party. Someone like Blair would carve open the divisions between the ERG nutters and the mainstream Tories, do a deal with the unions and tell Momentum to FO. As I've said on here repeatedly, I've never heard a Labour minister come out with a single policy, and their attempted skewering of Conservative failures is feeble "it's not right" rubbish because they are 2:2/3rd social science students and union protected morons. Corbyn coming back isn't actually a change as it is just a different figurehead for clowns that seem to want to remain unelected. 

The Conservatives will call an election next year and win big time, ditching the idiot at the top, and will likely be in power for a decade minimum. 

Demographics could come into play in a different way too.

As larger cities become more focused on leftie/woke/identity issues, they will inevitably find a way of taxing their wealthier citizens to pay for these schemes. This could lead to an exodus of traditionally middle class families to the shires (wfh will also push this along).

There will then need to be boundary changes to parliamentary constituencies to reflect these population changes which in turn will in turn no doubt help the tozzas' cause. 

wildred, m7 ur wrong point came after my post where i’d already pointed out someone else making that very same wrong point was wrong. it’s not my fault ur unable to see ur wrong

I made this point earlier in the week

of course people do often get more reactionary as they get older

but gen x - my generation - will remember Brexit and all the BJ lies and corruption and they remember the glory days of Blair  

The real issue is that Keir needs something policy wise that isn't simply doing what the other side did but sooner and harder and for longer which is all he's been saying for the last year.  The red wall voters just want to vote for someone who's talking about the issue that matter to them rather than what they consider to be niche policies dealing with issue that aren't a problem for the majority of voters.  Get the centre ground stuff right and then you can start worrying about the more eccentric stuff.

Realist the Tories are not decentralisers they centralise power. Not sure the wokey left in the big cities will get more money raising powers.

Its a pity the big city politics of the late Victorian period/ early tweenteenth century energised the regions.  A lot of those were tories. Chmaberlains of Burm etc

I do understand why identity politics plays so strongly with white working class voters that feel disenfranchised and forgotten.  I am mystified why it appears so important to reasonably successful well educated roffers, why are you so  obsessed with people being what you perceive as "woke"? Why are you so insecure that privileged white status may be lost?  I find it genuinely remarkable. 

I actually think there is nothing that Labour (and indeed the Lib Dems) can do to change this quickly. They have to stay calm and sensible, aim to the reasonable middle ground, and wait. Politics have tidal movements and at the moment the Tories are still at high tide. That will change. 

Grouville St. Mary07 May 21 09:10 ReplyReport

Heh @ oracle, apart from the actual voting you mean?

that doesn’t contradict my point. in fact, i agree. they don’t vote

the problem is u have to ask urself whether that’s a good thing and, if not, why is that happening

now don’t get me wrong, i completely understand that if, like u, someone is essentially a plastic football fan when it comes to politics allegiance, i get ur delighted.

but anyone who is a democrat in the truest sense - someone who believes that government should be, as best it can (appreciating it’s never quite possible) representative of the country as a whole. and that this is being a patriot, the best thing for our country. then they look at our entire political system with disappointment.

it’s silly that well over half of our voters is systemically disenfranchised. it means we have bad government and divisive society. it’s widely shown that primary reason people don’t vote is when they feel like there’s nothing really to vote for. 

it’s why, while i didn’t support the result, thought the way in which it was managed was hopeless, the brexter tactics were disgusting and largely to blame for ongoing inability to resolve it, the mandate at less than 25% of the country was pitiful and the slim margin of the result being treated as a waterloo simply highlighted the failure of our true sovereign system (parliamentary “democracy”), i was a huge fan of the 2016 referendum’s concept as the best but if democracy we’ be had in this country and stood by the result. i know that’s damning it with faint praise

now i don’t blame the tozzas for the fook up that is our parliamentary “democracy” only - clearly the whole party political system is to blame. and also the pathetic (starmer) and downright disgusting (corbynites) labour leadership plays a big part.

but the fact is the current tozzas r doing their level best to consolidate power, erode constitutional balance, gerrymander in novel ways (of which putting off the other side’s potential voters is an old tactic) and effectively being pro to-viktor orban’s (fair play, when it comes to state capture that guy is really competent)

so look - sure u shrug ur shoulders cos ur a die hard tozza. so i don’t expect u to care. but this is the problem. and frankly it’s a ticking bomb for the tozzas too, cos they’ll only go and blow it before long and the other lot will do it for a while. just with less corruption and more wealth bashing (or whatever new destructive fad they will have invented)

Guy Crouchback07 May 21 09:40

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I do understand why identity politics plays so strongly with white working class voters that feel disenfranchised and forgotten.  I am mystified why it appears so important to reasonably successful well educated roffers, why are you so  obsessed with people being what you perceive as "woke"? Why are you so insecure that privileged white status may be lost?  I find it genuinely remarkable. 

it’s not remarkable. the right wing has adopted identity politics because they have realised it has won them elections

tbf identity politics is not really a new idea 

It's interesting hearing Labour politicians complain about how the Tories have poured resources into the areas around Hartlepool.

Centrists genuinely see the use of government resources to improve people's lives as if it's somehow cheating. The political possibility that that is something government can and should do has been completely eliminated from their world view. 

I don't agree with how the Tories go about a lot of that kind of spending, but they at least are capable of admitting that it's possible.

Rex do you think it was always there. Just came to a fore in the Brexit campaign. Blair and team were never working class and could be a sneering at times.

 

Oh you mean your ‘thousand studies’ guff that you spouted to prove that you’re right? On being pushed you will probably point me to a heavily caveated study written in the US (where people tend to be more voting-consistent than they are in the UK especially given minority party alignments). 

pancakes I think though that can be criticised. The govt really should work for the whole nation once in power.

There may well be very good reasons the tax office moved to darlington. However if it was based purely to buy the local populace off it could have gone somewhere different and benefited the whole nation more.

You get into base money politics. Vote for me and you get some dosh. Dont and you get none. Ultimately not very efficient for 'the nation'.

"it’s not remarkable. the right wing has adopted identity politics because they have realised it has won them elections"

I realise that Oracle, I also understand why politicians do it, what I find remarkable is why so many roffers who are highly privileged appear to get so genuinely exercised that people appear to care too much about racism or homophobia or sexism.  The minute you hear white privileged people bandying around the word "woke" as a pejorative  term you know you are dealing with people deeply insecure of their own status.  I am not not sure why.

The Conservatives will call an election next year and win big time, ditching the idiot at the top, and will likely be in power for a decade minimum. 

I'm not sure I buy Boris getting axed any time soon.  He has a knack of cutting through to the electorate and winning big.  He did it in Labour London twice as mayor.  He did it with Brexit.  He did it big in 2019.  The one time recently this Tory machine put someone else at the wheel with TMay she lost her majority in about 6 six weeks.

I am convinced that Boris will try to call an early election at some point (maybe Autumn if everything is fully unlocked) and take advantage of this wave of support and Labour void.  There would be a bit of politicking to do on the FTPA - presumably either abolish it (like planned) or call Labour's bluff and ask for a new election (and call them chicken if they say no). 

 

Why does BJ need to call an early election dimi? He has a big election and now political capital.

Also its early in the parliament and it just buys him another year. People are sick and tried of elections.

Pancakes - spending money where it can do the most good is laudable, but when sitting Tory MPs say that "govt ministers will be reluctant to spend in areas controlled by the opposition" then that's quite something else:

Rex agree social media is a bizzare prism for politics. Twitter just before the last election seemed convinced Corbyn would win. Its a very small section of society and very closed one in their own little bubble.

The oddity of our system is that even now there is constant left/liberal majority in the popular vote.    Given our electoral system and particularly if Scotland becomes independent it is imperative that Lab/Lib enter an electorate pact and then change the electoral system to PR once in power.

Helfalump this will only make him more brazen. Hes a risk taker and a person who has no personal moral compass. Eventually it will catch up with him. Wont damage the Tories.

change the electoral system to PR once in power

THAT WOULD BE COMPLETELY UNDEMOCRATIC!

EVERYONE’S VOTES HAVING THE SAME WEIGHT IS TANTAMOUNT TO SOCIALISM!!

Wasnt this early though realist and BJ has a much bigger majority. Also TMPM had not won a big election. I just dont see why BJ would do it or need to do it. 

but when sitting Tory MPs say that "govt ministers will be reluctant to spend in areas controlled by the opposition" then that's quite something else

AND WHY - PRAY TELL - SHOULD DISLOYALTY BE REWARDED?!?

Why would anyone call an election with a large majority and three years to run?

People want COVID to go away and life gets back to ‘normal’, including international travel.  However great the U.K. vaccination programme continues to be that will not be before the middle of next year.  So Autumn 2022 is the earliest possible time.  Boris, yes he’ll still be in charge, may not want to go into the last year of the term, knowing that anything can happen in politics, so Spring 2023 is perhaps the latest time for the next General Election.

It gives Labour loads of time to change their image, leadership, membership and policies, IF they want to stand a chance of winning.

I think he will call it early because an election in 2021/2 is easier than an election in 2024.  In 2024:

  • he is more likely to have to own any negative Brexit consequences - at the moment he can just blame the pandemic 
  • people will have forgotten about the vaccine success by 2024
  • Labour seem to be taking a gap year as they want to keep their policies (if they have any) fresh for 2024.  It is pretty clear they are massively on the ropes at the moment with no connection to voters. 
  • 3 more years of Tory will add to the inertia that we have a change every 15 or so years.  Plus three more years of press ripping into you and calling you incompetent etc. 

2021/2 puts you into 2026/7 for the next election, which must be quite appealing, because it gives him a chunk of time to implement levelling up etc - most of this government term will just be COVID and aftermath. 

We don't live in 1997 anymore. Time passes, politics changes. Blair held power through a largely uninterrupted economic boom and the moment the boom ended Labour were out. 

pancake exactly time passes, we are living through a time of populism, rather like the 1930s (but hopefully with less extreme results), it is not forever, the wheel turns, centrism does exist and is not dead.   The wheel has already turned in the States.

He's all substance, no razzmatazz.  And he keeps falling for the "the public want the truth".  They don't care if they're lied to, they just want to hear the lies that comfort them.  Trump told lies that were too outlandish, the tozzas are playing a diet-trump game which is definitely working for them.

Biden saw the way the wind was blowing and embraced the left wing of his party. He's out there advocating for trillions in spending and waiving vaccine patents.  

Labour have spent the last year salting the earth to dispel any idea that they could be left wing or even have anything that resembling a policy. 

The idea that the two are comparable over the last year is laughable. 

is it not the case at the moment that the voters thing the tories on balance, have done a gr8 job re vaccinations and that's why they are popular. They have done a gr8 job on that front. Maybe labour would have done a gr8 job too. 

the mid nineties were quite good economically. I think Ken Clarke was a very good chancellor. Didn''t help the Tories.

Also since 2010 we have not exactly boomed. 10 years are being pretty crap. Tories still in power.

Maybe I am destroying by own point, but I do not think New Labour stayed in power due to economics.

You also can't discount the immense individual political skill of Blair, but unless there's a 1994 Tony Blair in lying around in a cupboard at Labour HQ it doesn't help much now. 

pancakes the Democrats had left wing candidates- they did not succeed, Biden is a bureaucratic centrist, always has been and everyone in the US knows it.  It is absurd to say he is product of polarised extreme or populist politics.   It is hardly very left wing to recognise it is vital for the entire world that vaccines are affordable for all.

That's funny because when Corbyn suggested waiving patents the entire Labour right went into absolute conniptions and are now on the record agreeing with Liz Truss rather than Joe Biden. 

Don't be dense, the whole point is that Biden is a centrist who has extended the olive branch and incorporated the left wing of his party into aggressive policy. Meanwhile Labour have attempted to simply expel the entire left wing of their party and has now found itself completely devoid of activists and on the verge of bankruptcy. 

Corbynism won't win an election in the UK, but the Labour party's current goal of salting the earth against their entire base is just as destructive a force. 

Labour are in a structurally and uniquely tough spot. A big heartland is gone in Scotland to the SNP and it's not coming back, it may be there for an alliance but not as a Labour stronghold.

The nativist parties have collapsed into the Tories. Lib Dems are much weakened but they have not collapsed into Labour in the same way or at least not in a geographically significant way.

The Tories are now able to appeal to the left behind UKIP voters and the pull the drawbridge up traditional Tories.

The centre always wins in the UK as happened in 2019 with this high spend big tax Tory party. Labour thankfully are too left wing for most people at the moment including in some of my native NE England.

 

Labour seems uninterested in normal low waged people - if they would talk to L3's ex colleagues postmen at royal mail or his current ones in his food delivery  job he would hear what is important to those working people on their low wages. However they have no interest in that as the left are certain they are right on every issue and if ordinary people will not support the weird politically correct views of Labour then Labour look down on them.

 

What labour could suggest is real practical things eg a universal income or free childcare and ability to set the cost against your tax or lower taxes or 5 new car plants near Sunderland or just practical stuff that matters to people then they might have more of a chance. Instead they want people to accept that people have babies rather than mothers and that men are women or you can be black simply because you say you are even if you are white. Labour has never said how mass immigration has negatively affected some people - they don't even accept that as an issue.

"What labour could suggest is real practical things eg a universal income or free childcare and ability to set the cost against your tax or lower taxes or 5 new car plants near Sunderland or just practical stuff that matters to people then they might have more of a chance"

In an event as rare as rocking horse manure - what Lydia said.

 

"Instead they want people to accept that people have babies rather than mothers and that men are women or you can be black simply because you say you are even if you are white"

I dont think this is a Labour party obsession at all, labour is as split down the middle on transgender issues

Haven't Labour been peddling this argument for decades - basically "all we need is a nasty flu season and a lot of the Tories natural base will be killed off and Labour will win win win!"

Well we've just had something quite a bit worse than a nasty flu season and guess what - people are still voting Tory!

diceman10 May 21 14:25

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fair point LA.  but they'll probably tell you it's because people are living longer

no, they’ll point out that the tozzas new base r elderly northern people who previously didn’t vote for them. specifically because their core was dwindling.

they have a new core now, but it’s still elderly and the passage of time is an electoral risk.

the tozzas r particularly good at reinventing themselves though, and shifting their base. that’s not to say they will manage it when their current core ages, but they’re flexible enough ideologically to be able to do so. that’s harder for labour, whose core message doesn’t actually evolve all that much

Labour is also increasingly losing the votes of some of the wealthier immigrant population who are often quite religious and socially conservative. Many of these find it hard to reconcile certain woke views on such issues as gender/identity/LGBT+ rights with their own cultural and religious beliefs. 

That conservative religious vote is being mentioned by some as the reason why Bailey did unexpectedly well in the London mayoral election - it appears that London is substantially more religious than most other places in the UK with some suggesting that at least 20pc of the population attend regular religious gatherings, whereas that number is very much lower outside the metropolitan areas. 

That conservative religious vote is being mentioned by some as the reason why Bailey did unexpectedly well in the London mayoral election - it appears that London is substantially more religious than most other places in the UK with some suggesting that at least 20pc of the population attend regular religious gatherings, whereas that number is very much lower outside the metropolitan areas. 

Yeah I can believe this. A family friend is Anglo-Nigerian and married to a pastor who apparently carries a lot of influence in the South London Nigerian church-going community (which is about 90% of them) and had some *strong* opinions on how his parish should be voting.