Sam Ashworth-Hayes Sam Ashworth-Hayes

The Tories are taking from the young to pay for the old

To understand the Conservative party’s approach to government, it’s useful to think of there being two Britains. This is something British people love to do; we divide the country into North and South, rich and poor, London and not. The division that matters for the Conservatives, however, is a little different. It’s not a matter of economics or geography, but age. It’s the divide between Old Britain and Young Britain.

Old Britain, with the aid of the Conservative party, is very slowly throttling Young Britain

The Conservative electoral strategy is simple and straightforward: it will do whatever it needs to win the votes of Old Britain, and it will do so at the cost of Young Britain. You can see this in every economic decision taken over the last decade of Conservative rule; working-age benefits have been cut even as the triple lock boosts pensions. Planning reforms which would have cut rents for young people have been shelved to preserve the prices of assets held by the old. Taxes on working age people have risen to the highest level since the second world war while the services they use have been cut; only the NHS and social care – the parts of the state most valued by the elderly – have been spared the knife.

Understanding why the party does this is straightforward. Old Britain is increasingly dominant as an electoral force. Once you account for turnout and eligibility, voters over the age of 55 make up an outright majority of the voting public. This is, historically, extremely unusual. We are used to seeing populations grow, with the young by simple mathematics outnumbering the old, and governance as a consequence tending to cater to their interests. 

The aging of the British population has reversed this trend, and in doing so has revealed a hidden failure mode in our democracy: Old Britain, if given free rein, will attempt to kill off Young Britain.

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