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The big dividing line in British politics – retirees who gave Johnson his majority – politicalbettin
The big dividing line in British politics – retirees who gave Johnson his majority – politicalbetting.com
There is some great analysis on voting behaviour in the latest edition of the New Statesman which today publishes the chart above in an article by Ben Walker.
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Young and not so young voters are all well and good for the Reds, but if you dont get them enthused (or believing their vote makes a difference) then reaching out to the grey vote sees a threat of losing your core to Green/LD etc.
For the conservatives do they just have to hope that as voters age they slip into voting Blue (like a comfy pair of slippers) or is there a 5-10-15 year demographic bomb that Cameron/Osborne tried to avert...
However, along with youth & suburban voters, it was seniors who were critical swing voters against Trump and for Biden in October & November 2020.
No qualifications:
Con 59%
Lab 23%
LD 7%
Oth 11%
Degree or higher:
Lab 39%
Con 34%
LD 17%
Oth 10%
https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/how-britain-voted-2019-election
"So while Labour goes through the current self-examination of how it can stop losing elections it can take some comfort by still being the party of workers." From the header. do these figures exclude both students and the unemployed I wonder. And do the include those retirees who continue to work on a full or part time basis. The phrase also seems to denigrate retirees almost suggesting they have never been workers.
And for actual "workers" it probably splits three ways: Labour, Conservative and How Do I Fill Out This Australian Visa Application Form Anyway?
I'm not sure I could bring myself to do that, however.
This is not the fault of either group but the parties.
So in this analysis what about people who have GCSEs and A-levels?
Or people who are qualified to a level equivalent to a degree, but not a degree?
Also, we need to remember that in terms of the difference it makes, degrees are not worth anything close to how they used to be.
If I have it correct, it will be a few years before the EU gets it's E-border in place. Presumably the **** of Brussels have been arguing about who gets to sit on which chair first, whilst the rest of the world gets on with stuff. Avoid France for a bit, until the borders and the President calm down.
Not sure where we are on this with E-Gates (?).
But it is not set in stone that right wing parties win the elderly by this kind of margin... so how can Labour get the elderly to vote for them?
Not sure -> but policies like free university tuition, better job protection for workers, increased security for renters... all seem kinda irrelevant.
And the Tories have happily outflanked Labour in -> spending plenty on NHS, increasing value of state pension.
It also includes a huge majority of uni students surely and the underclass of the inner cities that don't work and in many instances have never worked.
People tend to become more conservative when they have something to conserve. If the Tories want to get their numbers up or keep them steady they need to do more on home affordability.
It might be considered appropriate that the older cohorts make some recompense for Covid restrictions being all about protecting them. Like, maybe giving up the triple lock. It might be considered political suicide, however...
A glaring example would be council tax support, where nowadays both the unemployed and the lowest income of working families have to pay a significant proportion of the council tax whereas millions of pensioners still have their council tax paid for them in full by order of HMG.
A Labour Government would enhance these for them.
I don't think that label did the Tories much good, but not all of us 'oldies' think only of ourselves; many of us are worried about the life prospects for our children and grandchildren.
And welcome to Mr (I assume) 'cupofvb'
When I went into the Woolwich to apply for my mortgage, the mortgage manager looked blank when I mentioned the scheme and said that he'd never heard of it. I insisted he checked and he left me sitting in his office for ages while he went and did so. He came back to say that I was right, adding that I was the only person in that branch who had ever managed to qualify for it.
Free money schemes seem easier to come by nowadays!
I would suggest that policies aimed at the young can be popular with the middle aged too. Partly because we are worried about our teen and twenty-something kids getting established in life, but also because of more recent memories of being that age ourselves.
Reform of the Student Loan situation was quite popular with my age peers in 2017, and should be a centre-piece of Labour policy. Zero-interest would almost be a free policy as it is increasingly obvious that most are going to be written off anyway. Negative interest not such a bad idea too.
Social care funded by NI for pensioners too, with NI eventually being subsumed into income tax.
I remember having to make specific visits to the City of London Library to access details of things which I can now find in intimate detail within seconds.
The on-trend socialist should get some of this stuff and become a bona fide Lambrusco socialist:
https://www.vivino.com/GB/en/il-serraglio-saliceto-buzzalino-lambrusco-di-sorbara/w/2415165
Grown and made in 'red Emilia', the heartland of Italian communism.
It's actually very good, bone dry, outstanding for summer drinking and a rare find (not often seen in the UK) at only £15
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/02/new-british-tanks-costing-35bn-cannot-driven-safely-20mph-reveals/ (£££)
I reckon Boris will do this soon - to cut Labour off from getting a popular policy.
Magpie Boris will be happy to leave Labour with a rag-tag of unpopular stuff.
I suspect that if Labour developed a compelling vision of the future really meeting the needs of , the less jaded oldies will sign up.
Shocking incompetence on the tanks.
Ultimately, the problem is that no democracy has ever gone down the road of only letting net tax payers vote. Should those employed in the public sector get a vote?
As we have observed before the Labour party has always been a coalition of the middle class intellectuals (who provide the bulk of the leadership) and the traditional working class but they have lost the latter and I don't really see SKS as the man to get them back. Of course, the former is a significantly larger proportion of the population than it used to be and in some seats it will be enough but even with ethnic minorities added on (and the Tories are going after the Indian immigrant community big time) it is hard to see a winning coalition without a better performance amongst the oldies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0unyDh6wAo
Of course, you may dispute it was a ‘democracy.’
The chart above shows working age, it does not show workers. That Labour wins the young is not news.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-57337165
"It is not rocket science, we know the virus is airborne, we know surgical masks don't protect you from airborne viruses, and we're still in a dangerous situation with new variants."
Im sure the masks that Poundland are selling offer far more protection.
When I first heard of this idea I had some considerable difficultly in reconciling it with democracy but there is no doubt that our policy mix has been heavily influenced by the increasing number of the elderly and their propensity to vote. The triple lock is perhaps the most egregious example but there are many others. The motion tends to win amongst school kids!
His intended profession is teaching. He will need to rise a long way through the ranks to start paying any of it back. Which means it is essentially free money as it was for my wife on the older system.
Question - such a system where the government allows vast loans to be written off seems to be extraordinarily generous. Are we sure it isn't QE via the back door? No, we aren't having to bail out banks, we're just injecting them with printed money which generates an "income stream" which can sit on their balance sheets. Not QE at all...
Hotter on the detail than the Tories, they got a scheme that, in effect, is a graduate tax where very many students won't have to pay much, or anything.
The mistake they made was to overlook that electoral politics is won and lost on the big picture.
Honestly I think this is why the Cult has become so popular. People actually like change and when it is offered they vote for it - Thatcher, Blair, Johnson. Boring do nothing government is, well, boring!
We just need to be careful we are looking at consistent bases
'Gavin Williamson is so incompetent that it makes you nostalgic for Chris Grayling.'
The best argument in favour would be to weight votes by average remaining life expectancy, which would upweight the votes of the young on the grounds that they will suffer the consequences of today's policy decisions for much longer.
https://www.woking.gov.uk/benefits/council-tax-support
https://www.woking.gov.uk/sites/default/files/documents/benefits/Council Tax Support Scheme 2021.pdf
From 1 April 2013, council tax support in the form of council tax benefit was abolished. It is the duty of each local authority in England to have localised council tax support, in the form of a council tax reduction scheme.
So the central benefit was abolished by the coalition government. In Woking:
If you’re of working age, you cannot apply for Council Tax support if you and/or your partner have more than £10,000 in capital (money held in banks accounts, investments and properties held in your names).
For pensioners, the capital limit is £16,000.
The biggest bar to the younger and middling age people having political weight is their decision to vote in lower numbers than the elderly.
My point is simply that a large percentage of people who are classed as having degrees now wouldn’t have had degrees 30 years ago.
So - as someone else pointed out - part of this data set needs to be controlled for age. In addition, I suspect that people who get a degree in a non academic subject from a less recognised university are more likely to struggle economically (plus have student debt) so - once again - the data isn’t comparable over time
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-57176199
Under 30s: six votes
30-40: five votes
40-50: four votes
50-60: three votes
60-70: two votes
70 and over: one vote
The way you classify people with a degree is the same today as it was 30 years ago. They have a degree.
What is clear, however, is that Brexit has accentuated the age divide.
https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/2429229/
How is this idea any better than what the GOP are doing in the states?
The fact that estimated cost has doubled since Johnson started going on about it will, of course, be of no concern to the tories.
Pro-independence voters are unified, pretty much, behind the SNP (with a few voting for the male angler fish of the Greens). The unionist side is splintered among many parties of comparable strength.
Leavers have largely backed the Conservatives. The Remain vote has splintered. This has been exacerbated primarily by Labour having a far left lunatic in charge for four years, and a lacklustre performance by Starmer so far.
There is a reduction if the pensioner loses their spouse but not paying Council tax at all is not the case
I would need evidence of this to be honest
My opinion on this is heavily biased by a friend who became a nurse before degrees were required and is scathing about the change in terms of the quality of nurses it now produces.
He doesn’t take the world seriously. And therefore let’s us all off the hook. If he doesn’t, we don’t have to either. Hugely appeal to some.
This doesn’t end well.