What you believe has everything to do with how old you are

We’ve got bogged down, that’s the thing. Bogged down and caught up, all at once. The Prime Minister is rude about people and people mind, even if they’re the sort of people who are habitually rude about him. Europe is a mess we either need or we don’t, and the notion of chaps marrying other chaps gets everybody terribly excited, whether they’re in favour or against. And so travelled are these paths of debate, and so much fun do we all have having them, that I suspect we’ve lost sight of the biggest political fight of all. Which isn’t really about any of these things at all, but about people. And how old they are.

Personally, I’m not normally a fan of columns based upon numbers. My preferred battlefields are the smaller ones of individual hearts and minds, and bludgeoning my way with bushels of statistics isn’t usually my style. Plus you need to look them up, and Lord it’s exhausting. Sometimes, though, the numbers are so glaring you can’t ignore them. Like now.

Speaking almost factually, it’s pretty unlikely that the Tory grass roots are ‘swivel-eyed loons’. By most estimates, their average age is somewhere between 65 and 70, and swivelling your eyes behind bifocals rather defeats the purpose. Meanwhile, according to a poll by Survation this week, 33 per cent of those over 65 would vote Ukip tomorrow, and 13.4 per cent of everybody else would. Similarly, according to an ICM poll earlier this year, 37 per cent of over-65s fancy the idea of gay marriage, compared with 72 per cent of those below. This is glaring stuff.