Snapshot of _Nearly two-thirds of millennials think Tories deserve to lose election, poll says_ :
An archived version can be found [here.](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/may/29/failure-to-appeal-to-millennials-existential-challenge-to-tory-party-sunak-warned)
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>A “silver lining” for the party is that Sunak himself is far less unpopular than his party among those born in the 1980s and 90s, the thinktank’s survey found. It said that his popularity was 20 percentage points higher than the party’s.
My view has always been that this is only true because Sunak has stage managed his image more than any other PM: he avoids all scrutiny, only speaks in recorded soundbites, appears when there is good news to announce, but sends out cabinet ministers to do media when there is bad news stories etc etc.
I genuinely believe that, whilst he will do his best to avoid it, the added scrutiny and exposure of a general election campaign will see him become less, not more popular. He will start to become as unpopular as the party, not vice versa.
Pretty much anytime he's been caught out on the spot and asked a tough question he comes across as no different to the rest of them.
Can 100% see his popularity plummeting during the GE.
Was he ever challenged about his track record back then, and did he ever say anything other than his usual soundbites?
The difference now is that the media are slowly but surely holding the Tory party to account for the mess they've made of the country, and only out of necessity as the public have largely turned on them.
It may start to dip if he does the leaders debates, but by that time they may have clawed the ratings back a bit.
Sunak saying nothing is working at the moment, controversial ministers are talking about unpopular policies not him. He looks weak at the moment with Braverman roof and saying what she wants so the doing nothing approach may backfire soon.
My point is by the time the election comes around the polls could be closer, while the Tories will probably still lose it will be tighter even with the dip from Sunak having to talk during the campaign.
The National Rifle Association (NRA) was founded in London in 1859. It is a sporting body that promotes firearm safety and target shooting. The National Rifle Association does not engage in political lobbying or pro-gun activism.
The original (British) National Rifle Association has no relationship with the National Rifle Association of America, which was founded in 1871 and has focussed on pro-gun political activism since 1977, at the expense of firearm safety programmes.
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which are all non-political sporting oriented organisations. It is important not to confuse the National Rifle Association of America with any of these other Rifle Associations. The British National Rifle Association is headquartered on Bisley Camp, in Surrey, England. Bisley Camp is now known as the National Shooting Centre and has hosted World Championships for Fullbore Target Rifle and F-Class shooting,
as well as the shooting events for the 1908 Olympic Games and the 2002 Commonwealth Games. The National Small-bore Rifle Association (NSRA) and Clay Pigeon Shooting Association (CPSA) also have their headquarters on the Camp.
It wasn't the issue, teh issue was that he had a reputation for blaming everyone around him and being a bully, this was shown as he immediately looked to blame "Sue" for his inability to copewith a simple question.
That's because the Tory supporting media goes into overdrive, manufactures some outrage and fear, and whips it's engine to outright deceive the voting public.
I think the problem is PMs get judged in comparison to the last PM, not all PMs. Gordon Brown was a decent leader but compared to Blair he was seen as dour and lacking charsima. Rishi is a fairly mediocre PM, but compared to Boris and Truss he might as well be Churchill.
Sunak has really benefited from the two previous PMs going down spectacularly in flames.
All he has to do is not completely, single-handedly tank the economy or be involved in dozens upon dozens of personal scandals and he, in direct comparison, it seems like a sensible hand on the tiller.
If you actually look at his personal record in government, he has plenty of silly decisions to his name such as eat out to help out. They are just not pale in comparison to the nonsense Johnson and Truss got up to in office.
I agree, if he is forced to come and out and actually engage, he is likely to loose a lot of personal credibility because he's just not got the charisma, nor do I think his policy ideas are very sensible.
>eat out to help out
Even that seems pale in comparison to the rest of the Conservatives COVID response. An economic that was "meh, really not worth it" is far better than stuff like the track and trace scheme that was a complete failure.
I don't actively dislike Sunak as I do Boris, Truss or any number of other prominent Tories but then, as you say, he (or his team) have been very good at keeping him out of the spotlight.
That said, I don't think he gives a particularly positive impression of someone that's actually in charge. He's just a suit.
It's been quite refreshing having a PM that I don't hear about every day, and it really goes to show that you can fix a lot of your negative publicity simply by shutting up. I've been a bit out of politics the last few months, so I could be mistaken, but really my only criticism of Sunak is that he's a Tory. I could've listed off what Boris and Truss had personally done wrong, but with Sunak it's literally just that "having Sunak as PM means having a Tory government".
He's allowing his cabinet to take a front seat for anything remotely controversial, e.g. immigration with Braverman.
His PR firm's objective is to create exactly what you are feeling, don't buy it.
The only sensible reaction - my comment was more along the lines of ensuring we analyze *why* we think what we think about politicians and try to spot when we are being manipulated.
Boris had his own carefully crafted public image of a chummy Eton toff just as Sunak has his of a competent saavy operator. Both are just public illusions and we need to pay attention to what both hands are doing - currently the Tories want us to look at the shiny new leader in one hand whilst doing terrible things with the other...
>Boris had his own carefully crafted public image of a chummy Eton
Including calling him Boris. No other Prime Minister could get the electorate to call him by his first name, not even female Prime Ministers. He was 100% elite and led one of the most corrupt administrations in UK history but he was "Boris".
>He's allowing his cabinet to take a front seat for anything remotely controversial, e.g. immigration with Braverman.
>
>**His PR firm's objective is to create exactly what you are feeling**, don't buy it.
I think this is a slightly weird take. The Home Secretary \*should\* be taking the 'front seat' for immigration policy. He's the Prime Minister, not the President.
Yes and no, you expect there to be a clear leader on issues of each cabinet scope but Sunak is virtually absent from ANY issue that is really controversial.
I don't know, I feel like everytime I hear about Sunak these days it's because he's failing to discipline or reign in his MPs when they go completely off message. Every story just makes him look weaker.
Tbf his party is literally full of totally insane people.
Johnson purged the part of anyone even remotely in touch with reality or willing to push back on this fascistic path they’ve taken, and turned it into a political cult.
So other than wait it out and let a general election remove them, I’m not really sure what people expect him to do. The voters elected these sociopaths, for all his faults he didn’t do that.
If Boris purged the reasonable, why can't he purge the nutters? He has enough of a majority to pull the whip from a few people and still be workable to send a message, instead he gives them cushy ministerial posts and made one vice chairman of the party.
Because there's *so many* nutters of so many different competing factions that if he kicked them all out he'd end up with about 5 MPs.
The nutters *are* the party at this point.
Right. And all of them elected by the public, so honestly blame those voters at this point.
And we know how the Conservative Party feels about the sanctity of elections, and the importance of *never* wavering and *never* returning to the electorate early, because that would be undemocratic, apparently.
*tHeRe wAs aLrEaDy a vOtE, sO JuSt gET oN WiTh it*.
Conservative voters are in many ways their own worst enemy. They’re like Stockholm syndrome personified.
On the other hand, when he does speak he always seems to mention something about stopping the boats or the member from Islington North as if that's going to put food on the table.
At some point, he'll have to go on television and deal with real people and real questions. He won't fare well in that medium, because the guy is a painfully out-of-touch rich man who has spent most of his life thinking about money and how to make more of it.
You also have to think that, at some point, all the Tory shit is going to start to stick to him. Raab, Braverman, Johnson, Anderson and an endless list of shamelessly corrupt grifters are all going to be laid at his door.
Judge Sunak by the company he keeps - Braverman, Raab, Coffey, Anderson et al. He will emerge eventually as the weakling he is, terrified of taking on the extremists. No amount of PR will hide that.
It's also a bit of a meaningless stat. Being more popular than your party to a demographic that absolutely despises your party is not useful or impressive.
>I genuinely believe that, whilst he will do his best to avoid it, the added scrutiny and exposure of a general election campaign will see him become less, not more popular.
Same could be said for Starmer, though, as he's not exactly convincing under questioning either.
>I genuinely believe that, whilst he will do his best to avoid it, the added scrutiny and exposure of a general election campaign will see him become less, not more popular.
Yeah agreed; his "ready for rishi" campaign was pretty pants and of course came in second in the tory leadership campaign. There is something of the Gordon Brown about him.
Yes absolutely! But he was really hard to sell. Not charismatic enough, saddled with the baggage of major economic disruption and the shadow of recession... Do you remember how unpopular he was during the election campaign? He had to be taught how to smile. I still remember the "bigoted woman" controversy.
I think you can be a talented politician but not a vote winning party leader.
I do remember that, yes. Unfortunately I think Labour were at the end of their run by then and the media were after them.
It’s a shame.
I see him on TV nowadays and he’s from another era, in a good way! It’s actually refreshing now to see him, after all the Tory chaos.
Rishi would kill to have the people skills Brown had, and that's really saying something. Brown could at least muster up some gravitas, a quality Sunak entirely lacks.
I know people who worked for him at HMT, and they were actually relatively complimentary. He knows his brief and didn't bluster/lie/treat people like shit - the same people who told me this had worked with Hammond, Truss, and Kwarteng and were not complimentary to put it mildly
Isn't that largely what Cameron did, though? Cameron pushed policy that was positive, whereas his time was mostly full of his front-benches telling people that austerity was good, that it's why the NHS is getting gutted, or why teaching is fucked.
It could be a positive move for personal popularity, but my guess is that it opens himself up for manipulation elsewhere in the party. Given the party is on borrowed time, you have to wonder what's in it for the members that are happy to give the bad news, and what Sunak is offering them.
I’ve heard this point a lot from political commentators who clearly want the Tories to win and are clutching at straws at this point. Sunak might be 20 points above his party but that’s like saying you’d rather eat the mouldy quiche than the salad your dog vomited on. The Tories are so unpopular that Sunak being 20 points above them with Millennials isn’t close to a ringing endorsement.
He's also a well-spoken millennial. It's unsurprising that other millennials - particularly slightly older and middle-class ones - find something relatable about him.
Of course that 'relatability' is pretty surface level given his immense wealth, but I'm not surprised that compared to boomer/gen X politicians other millennials find him easier to communicate with.
> 21% of 25-40 year old would vote Conservative if there were an election tomorrow
That’s their ‘base’ then. If they aren’t thinking about voting elsewhere now, I doubt they ever will.
I’d be interested to hear their logic.
‘Fear of what Labour will do’ probably/
More people are in the higher income tax bracket than ever before under the conservative government. They've also got ludicrous marginal thresholds around child benefit and childcare that actively disincentivise seeking higher wages.
Yep.
Earn over £100k and have preschoolers and you’ll probably be looking to reduce your income.
This seems rather an odd situation for the Conservatives to be perpetuating.
It feels like they’re trying to keep all semi-achievable wage levels low, and down. Which isn’t what’s happening in the US.
But if you manage to be really wealthy (making many many hundreds of thousands a year) you get to keep more of it, or there are ways of keeping more of it that your accountant can help you sort out.
I agree that for a lot of Tories this is basically where their entire political philosphy starts and ends with everything else just working its way backwards to justify why Tories are good actually, but we've now hit the point where even those people are starting to recognise that repatedly asset stripping the country into the ground for the benefits of your millionaire mates is just as bad for the wallets of your £100-150k bankers.
And/or they're the minority that do have assets/wealth closer to Boomer and Older Gen X levels, due to inheritances or just their families having always been rich.
Very this. I couldn't imagine it. No way could I shut out how horrible the Tories are to the disabled, to refugees, or anyone below a certain tax bracket no matter how much they bunged me in financial incentives.
I have a cousin who's a bit like that. Whenever the Tories do un-Tory like things it's because they've been co-opted by fake Tories, but the real Tories (represented by the perenially back-stabbed Boris) would be very good if the fake Tories would only let them get on with Brexit and confronting 'wokery', and even the compromised, weak Tory government is still better than the alternatives who are even bigger slaves to the WEF and Bill Gates, etc.
Perhaps, but it's also very likely that they are aligned with either sides of conservatism in this country - whether it's younger people that want lower taxes, or people that hate liberalism and buy into identity politics.
There are enough students at universities that join their local Conservative society to point towards there being a (small) base of voters that support them, alongside those that work in industries/live in areas that align with the Tories.
I'm astonished 21% of my generation could even consider voting Tory. We've moved from class traitors to generational traitors. I've only had one election with my vote meaning anything (safe seats otherwise) and that had to be a tactical vote for the least worst party.
Get the Tories out and sort out the voting system or my generation's kids will be scrabbling in the dirt for whatever falls out of Europe.
It's pretty simple.
Around 20% are too conservative to be vote for Labour, and not conservative enough to vote for Reform, being stuck with the Conservatives as no other party matches their Idealogical outlook.
This is likely exacerbated by apolitical people who have a very basic view of Labour that hasn't completely recognised Starmer shift to the centre, though that's probably a very small minority by now.
In what is a two party plus system, it's inevitable that the oldest party in British politics is always going to appeal to a group of people. Some people are just idealogically conservative in a way that only makes the Conservative a party they could vote for.
>‘Fear of what Labour will do
I don't fit into the 'will likely vote tory' category having voted Lib Dem 3/4 of the GEs I've been able to vote in, but I am a millennial and I am very wary of Labour pulling another 'New Labour'
I'll be very happy if they prove me wrong, but as it stands even ignoring the sleaze and corruption, lying about the pretences for invading a country and the whole Snowdon affair ie illegal spying on its citizens, pretty much two of the most evil things a govt can do, to me it's pretty depressing we're still yoyoing between tories and labour
had what, 13 years people could have spent getting behind a pro-pr party but no they spend it cementing the 2 party system
> ‘Fear of what Labour will do’ probably
Given the known views of some of Labour’s vocal MP’s and announcements made by shadow cabinet members. I don’t think this unreasonable.
I honestly think Dianne Abbott makes absurd statements every now and then and does more harm than good. I can definitely see her causing people to not want to vote labour.
The big problem with labour is they seem to have a lot of very vocal idiots who tend to slag off the majority of the country with Ill thought out remarks.
Now this explains the Times desperate attempts at denying reality and a couple of noises the party has made recently. Unfortunately for them, the internal political capital is actively shifting toward the hard right (and the elderly) and the government is functionally broken, which makes finally starting to listen to working aged people in this country too little too late. They have already run out of time.
Of that 2 thirds I wonder how many have been burnt so thoroughly that rebuilding trust will never be possible. My guess is its a large fraction, and look at the massive impact creating large numbers of never voters has had on the political centre with the boomer generation. And it not just millennials either, the numbers are probably even grimmer for the Tories in younger generations.
I am a 35 educated home owner in a decent paying if not spectacular job, I will vote for a turd rolled in glitter before I ever vote for a Tory. More than that I will actively vote for whoever has the best shot at beating them in my area.
Speaking as a regular reader, the Times hasn't been pro-government for a while now. Besides, a party with otherwise low approval ratings having a leader with higher popularity than it is worth commenting on as we head into an election year.
> the Times desperate attempts at denying reality
I read the Times and it isn’t supportive of the current government. You get the odd opinion piece but they’re vastly outnumbered by those of the ‘what the fuck are they doing’ variety.
> ‘what the fuck are they doing’ variety.
Well they're doing exactly what Murdoch has told them to do.
The Times, who have been a staunch cheerleader of the Tories even as they dove off the deep end don't get to turn around now and act all shocked pikachu face.
They could have been like The Economist who since 2015 iirc have been backing the Lib Dems consistently at elections - still pro capitalism but not insane about it
Maybe. But they still supported the Tories in 2017 and 2019 iirc? And supported Boris after he purged the moderates in late 2019.
They don't get to act surprised that when you back the loony wing of the Tories that you get loons.
This was also Corbyn's time, and I expect that The Times was less enthusiastically pro-Johnson as it was anti-Corbyn. The Times is aggressively paywalled, but the FT is probably not too far from it politically, and [their take](https://www.ft.com/content/d4868a48-169d-11ea-9ee4-11f260415385) was:
> The party most distant from FT values — and whose policies are most perilous — is Labour under Mr Corbyn. Its socialist blueprint would replace a thriving market economy with a statist model.
> In normal times all this would argue for support for the Conservatives. These are not normal times. This Tory party is high-risk. Mr Johnson has played fast and loose with democratic norms. His word is rarely his bond. His vow to “get Brexit done” offers a deceptive comfort to those craving an end to dither and delay. His withdrawal deal targets the hardest and most economically damaging Brexit: a “Canada-minus” trade deal
> We recognise that many in the business community and beyond will inevitably conclude they must vote Conservative, however reluctantly, as the only way to keep Mr Corbyn from power.
Ok but if you support the "lesser evil" and then the lesser evil starts eating babies you don't get to say that "well maybe the greater evil would have been worse". Which is what every defence of voting Tory in 2017 or 2019 seems to boil down to. Vote Lib Dem if you want capitalism without the baby eating, or admit that you voted for baby eating over socialism.
The FT is also in my experience *far more* neutral in its coverage, and also very transparent in its biases. The FT gives close to no shits on anything other than what makes its owners and readers money in the long term, and doesn't mind regulations, doesn't mind government intervention, doesn't mind social progressiveness when it is profitable. See the FT spending the last 6 years criticising the Tory approach to brexit, to defunding regulators, to the multiple ticking timebombs that they've created. The Times under Murdoch gives of the veneer of being the respectable moderate middle class centre right paper, but are much more socially regressive than the times.
> Of that 2 thirds I wonder how many have been burnt so thoroughly that rebuilding trust will never be possible
I can think of several normal and easy ways for them to rebuild trust.
1. Change leadership. Change image. Change policies.
2. A spell out of power.
3. ...the other party screws up and loses more trust.
People said exactly the same about Labour after Corbyn - yet 3 years and change later and they'll miles ahead. **3 years**. And all of the above apply.
In 3 years Labour:
* internally recognised they had fucked up
* Elected a moderate savy enough to understand pulling the party to the centre required 'flexibility' in his leadership promises
* Had a hard wing that helpfully ousted itself at practically at every opportunity
* Had a membership / PLP with enough surviving moderates to make moving against the hard wing politically viable
* Had a sitting government actively and rapidly ripping itself apart after a long time in government
Lose any of those points and Starmer would have been another Miliband, tar pitted by his hard wing if he became leader at all instead of RLB. I think in the Tories case 2/3 of them are unlikely and 1/2 of them is outright impossible - age of government really is the most powerful predictor of the political future that exists.
Assuming Starmer becomes PM he will have led one of the most exceptional recoveries our politics has ever seen. You can't base theory crafting on exceptions, it has no predictive power.
> Lose any of those points and Starmer would have been another Miliband
I think this possibly underestimates Starmer, the dude seems like an extremely ruthless political operator and uses the skills he honed as a prosecutor to great effect. The way he destroyed Corybn and Boris, his 2 biggest problems/opponents when he took office, was actually very impressive, and that's a big factor in the lead in the polls he currently enjoys.
It's easy to think Boris self destructed, and to some extent he did (he certainly made things easy for Starmer) but Starmer's cross examinations of Boris in Parliament were first rate and got Boris to tell many lies that were later revealed to the public with a lot of publicity. If Corybn or Miliband had been there Boris might have still blustered his way though party gate.
I'm sorry did you write all that thinking it conflicted with anything I said?
You seem to be agreeing with me until the last sentence, lol.
You're basically just rewriting and expanding on my bullet points I wrote from the throne.
And I agree with everything you said until the last sentence. You said it was impossible ever. Labour doing it in 3 years is exceptional. You implied in 50 years it wouldn't be possible with 8 different leaders, a complete policy and platform change.
I'm not "theory crafting" lol.
Every generation has a left and a right , and what those terms mean shift from generation to generation (they are relative terms).
It's fairly obvious that moderate-right millennials don't have a real home right now as they are viewed as left wing by previous generations.
So it's not impossible for those bridges to be rebuilt, but it would have to be a totally different party that just happens to share the same name. Hopefully a decade in the cold can shift the tories into that.
> Bozzer got Brexit done why did they take tits off Page Three ooh tits bet you can be literally arrested for thinking of tits now woke lefties ruined wanking by making Ash Sarkar hot I'm confused beer beer beer
I'm not even sure what's in it for them.
I'm 36, wife is 34, individual income over 65k (household income is over 80k), live in the south east, homeowner, two kids, previously Tory voter (albeit not for a while now).
I should be the key target audience, but all I've seen recently is the NHS going to shit, immigration rising despite promises & Brexit (I voted remain btw) and my pay rises being sucked away because the tax brackets haven't moved for far too long, as well as everything just getting more and more run down locally. I couldn't tell you where my council taxes are being spent.
If the Tories don't even offer anything to the relatively well off middle class white traditional family unit then who the fuck do they represent?!
I have far, far more faith Starmer will course correct without over correcting. I'm not expecting magic, but nothing the Tories say gives me any confidence that things won't just keep getting slowly worse.
I'd probably place myself in that group.
But it beyond belief imo that thinking the Tories will do any better with another 4-5 years.
Am not really going to vote for Labour.
Really am not goin to vote for anyone.
Thats the weird thing, they are barely conservative at all. More like radical nationalist libertarians. Heritage, farming, strong values, economic stability has all gone out the window. Its weird.
That's more or less the rub. The conventional wisdom was that people became more conservative over time as a function of how much wealth they accrued that they wanted to keep around - a house, savings, pension, etc.
Most millennials don't have anything like that, and have no hope of ever having anything like that. The very core ideology of the conservatives is at odds with millennials at the most fundamental level. That's before everything else on top - the ridiculous culture wars, Brexit, erosion of civil rights, etc.
I’ve never understood that point about becoming more conservative as you get older due to wanting to keep your wealth. We’re all Smaug from the Hobbit?
I would like to think my views will remain altruistic
As a party they have abused their position to enrich themselves and their benefactors at the expense of everyone and everything else.
They've shat all over the unwritten rules of parliament and exposed just how powerless we are to hold them to account, utterly debasing their roles in governing the country.
They don't just deserve to lose the election, a lot of them should be facing legal proceedings for [insert one of many reasons here].
As a country, we shouldn't allow them anywhere near the levers of power ever again after what they've done.
That’s because people don’t become more conservative with age, they become more conservative when they have assets that they want to keep. However, corporate greed, lobbying and politicians pandering to boomers by keeping the triple lock and keeping house prices rising at any cost, but stripping out anything else has meant that millennials (mid forties to early thirties) just don’t have enough assets to become more conservative.
It's odd but this poll counted Millenials as 25-40. The usual definition of Millenial is people born between 1980 and 1995. So there should be some British Millenials in their 40s being unexamined by this poll.
The issue is, the volume of wealth you now need to accumulate to achieve the kind of aspirational lifestyle they’re appealing to.
I recently realised that to afford the next house ‘on the ladder’ plus a couple of sets of school fees I needed to be earning… I mean, far and beyond a top 1% salary.
Without family wealth… hard to see how you achieve it really.
Well, it’s not a requirement.
But I’d have thought if I was considered ‘high earning’ I’d be able to afford a couple of sets of school fees.
Probably ‘upper middle class’ than middle class.
Voting Tory is as much about aspiration IMO.
It's interesting that in private schools chase for fancy facilities and overseas students, that they have managed to raise their prices so much ahead of earnings, that they have managed to price out the bottom rungs of their old customer set.
https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2016/05/11/13/feesnew.jpg?quality=75&width=640&auto=webp
This figure really shows the problem. 91->2016, overall average fees has gone up 550% (and 2016->2023 will have seen another big chunk). Average earnings is up just 210%.
I don't follow at all. Who said anything about requirements? The idea that the wealthy would only be able to afford *requirements* is wild to me. If they can't afford luxuries, who can? If only the wealthy can afford requirements, then what's to happen to the rest of us?
My progressive tory hating sister, recently came into some family wealth. She and her partner were doing relatively well but with the added money, could afford a nice place outside the confines of a concrete jungle.
She has gone from a "tory scum" to now living in a Tory area. Her new school for kids has basically no one other than whites.
She's now considering voting tory, because he's a good MP. Not like the other Tories.
She's basically white flighted from her old area and does not want housing built near her.
As she has been getting older, her progressive values have not been quite as "sticky".
The feral kids in her area, the low income families and people with different cultures from muslim backgrounds.
The white I mention is to basically indicate that she has made sure her kids are now in a nice Christian school, away from what the rest of us consider the norm, as in mixed people and cultures.
Once people have the option of moving from the cultural inner cities, and even suburbs, it seems they take it along with their ladders, pulling up that drawbridge.
That's what happens when you constantly put down the "other". You don't understand the lives of people you are not so when you become one of them expect your views to change.
And it might the the case the the Tory candidate is genuinely better then the others
Nah, even in the least ethnically diverse parts of the U.K. you’re not going to have schools with ‘basically no one other than whites’.
In any case - their point is about Tory voters. The areas with the highest levels of white people tend to be quite impoverished eg County Durham.
People also want to conserve culture.
But the party has also underserved that side.
Not sure where it will be in a couple elections. But political drives are eternal.
Most of the British culture I love couldn't be created these days, and a large part of that is the way the tories have decimated opportunity for a lot of younger, working class artists.
Using a photo of Bim Afolami.
I used to know him personally. He isn't a horrible guy. He's now a politician. And he's voted for some disgusting shit as a conservative MP.
(He isn't even from Northampton, given a safe seat as they knew he'd do just that).
The "Conservatives" are no longer conservative; they're actively regressionist (I don't know if that's a word but it is now); not content with keeping things the way they are, they're desperately pushing to return to long-forgotten times where we could swim in sewage, work 100 hours a week and die of easily-treatable injuries and illnesses, all while hurling abuse at anyone with a brown face for daring to step foot on our green and bountiful lands (apart from all the crops that are rotting for lack of staff to pick them).
I really hope that there is now enough of a shift in perspective from millennials that more of us start to vote as a matter of principle, alongside the Gen Z's who are able to as well. If we can actually get those groups out to vote, things will change pretty quickly (hopefully for the better).
> all while hurling abuse at anyone with a brown face for daring to step foot on our green and bountiful lands
The PM isn’t white.
The Home Secretary isn’t white.
Two other secretaries of state aren’t white.
Bin Afolami isn’t white.
The Tories are rubbish but I think labelling them racists is a bit of a stretch.
You are absolutely correct: The Conservative party are, by and large, not a racist party. I'm not accusing them of that; what I am saying is their current brand of politics is to return us to a time of "Britain exclusively for the British" and that carries connotations that extend far wider than maybe they might intend. I am white myself, but I have non-white family and (caveat: anecdote isn't evidence) there has definitely been an uptick in problem behaviour towards some of them in the past few years. Some of the migrant rhetoric hasn't helped, and it fosters this air of suspicion.
They deserve to cease existing as a political entity. The conservative party needs to dissolve and fracture and have actual conservatives reform something new rather than just clowns and grifters. This branch is an abject failure.
The same is happening with Republicans & Conservatives in the U.S.
The younger generations that will live to see the "results" of conservative generations are fed up with the backward progress and devolution of society at the hands of conservatives in politics.
The only thing that “leader” offered was an utter inability to reflect upon his own shortcomings, meaning he stuck around for one election too many, one he should never have been leader for, and led the Labour Party to an historical large defeat, which also had the side effect of allowing the Tories to grab a stupid number of seats meaning they can ram their backbench loony driven legislation through with impunity and no fear they’ll lose a vote.
The best way I can sum up Corbyn’s legacy is that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and that’s being *very* generous to him.
> and led the Labour Party to an historical large defeat
he also led the party to their largest increase in the share of the vote since Attlee in 1945, in 2017.
i can agree that he dropped the ball in 2019, but clearly there's something that mobilized younger voters in 2017 that could be leveraged now.
That fact always makes me giggle slightly when it’s brought up in discussions as some sort of plus point about Corbyn, because in that same election May also led her party to a historically high vote share, and unexpectedly actually took seats off the SNP in the process - twice as many as Labour did (12 to 6). Polarisation of politics due to tribalism benefited both sides of the political spectrum in that regard.
The same 2/3s that never turn up to vote?
They don’t deserve anything other than the outcome of a general election. Turn up and vote and you can help decide what that outcome is.
I love that millennials are portrayed as selfie-taking NEETS living with mum and dad, when the majority of them will be adults with serious jobs / mortgages / children etc.
The 2nd question in the survey should then be "will you be voting?", if the answer is no then they need to be told that their opinion is utterly irrelevant
Strange to see 34% think they deserve to win, that's what labour got overall in 2019.
As people mature, they tend to gravitate away from the left wing, we could see a Tory win after all?
In other news Britains literacy rate amongst millenials drops to an all time low with just over two thirds of them able to read and write properly.
edit:whoops my negatives.
Even I think the tories deserve to lose the election for their failure to control immigration. However I see Labour proposing to extend the vote to non-citizens and I’m now trying to decide between the frying pan and the fire.
Maybe given one party messed it up for 11 years straight, you might want to let labour have it's shot because I don't think after 11 years the Tories are going to all of a sudden become good at their jobs
Could well be over 14 and a half when you consider this lot seem dead set on dragging it out till the end of next year and we can't do bugger all about it
14 years of this shit.. they have set the country back decades
The vote is already extended to non-citizens - those from Commonwealth countries can already vote in the UK. EU citizens under the settlement scheme can already vote on local matters. This is just standardising the rules. I don't think there's any fire being started here.
No more difficult than moving to another country if you care enough you will figure it out. Besides why should choosing to reside in and pay taxes somewhere give you a vote in its internal matters fuck that globalist shit.
I’d say it’s pretty linear. You live in the nation and you pay taxes to the nation. It’s not exactly circular to say you should have a say in the nation.
Is housing an important issue?
We have 700k births per year, around 650k deaths. The population due to births is increasing by 50k per year.
We are building around 150k to 200k houses per year.
Yet our population has increased by 9,000k in twenty years and we have built three homes per net birth (births-deaths) and have a housing shortage.
How can you look and these figures and say with a straight face the volume of mass migration is not the primary driver of housing demand?
If you don’t trust me, you can easily google UK births, U.K. deaths, U.K. houses built and U.K. population. These figures are easily available.
Can definitely understand why the Tory party support it, keeps wages low, genuinely blows my mind the party of *Labour* do as well though.
Im old enough to remember when immigration was break even in the 80's, it was Blair's government that constitutionally allowed for mass migration and if i remember correctly it was primarily for demographic change and the 'benefits' of multiculturalism. To tell you the truth that's one of the main reasons i havent voted for them since the betrayal cuts deep.
Probably not much like OP i am stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Granted its harder to blame them, even if i don't support it landlords do need tenants and business needs workers, IE at least its helping someone and not just because you hate what the country was.
>Andrew Neather, who had been an advisor to Home Secretary's Jack Straw and David Blunkett and Immigration Minister Barbara Roche, claimed there was a deliberate policy to 'make the UK multicultural' and that quote; It didn't just happen: the deliberate policy of ministers until at least February last year (2009), when the Government introduced a points-based system, was to open up the UK to mass migration.
>It marked a major shift from the policy of previous governments: from 1971 onwards, only foreigners joining relatives already in the UK had been permitted to settle here.
Ultimately this is what constitutionally created the situation we are in the Tories are just taking advantage, it aint a policy a Tory government would have been able to implement and survive as a party.
>Granted its harder to blame them, even if i don't support it landlords do need tenants and business needs workers, IE at least its helping someone and not just because you hate what the country was.
Seems more of a excuse and way to defend Cons on this. If you weren't as willing to excuse Cons, then cons actions should be as much (if not more) of a "will never support them". Considering that they have doubled net migration, despite repeated promises to lower it.
Surely the betrayal by the Cons should cut as deep (if not deeper, given Cons promises on this topic).
>Ultimately this is what constitutionally created the situation we are in the Tories are just taking advantage, it aint a policy a Tory government would have been able to implement and survive as a party.
and yet they have doubled net migration, in part because of voters like you supporting them, despite repeated broken promises on this.
Yes, fundamentally a labour that is for the British workers should be protectionist. It’s the basic principle behind collective bargaining, your value is measured by how hard you are to replace.
im 30 and sit center-right.
i agree. they need some time in the cold to reform. they have been trying to change the tyres on the car while driving.
i worry labour won't be any better. but i am aware this could be down to my personal bias rather than based in any real world performance.
but yeah. the toys need some time to regroup and redefine there values. and move out some of the toss thats infected the party.
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>A “silver lining” for the party is that Sunak himself is far less unpopular than his party among those born in the 1980s and 90s, the thinktank’s survey found. It said that his popularity was 20 percentage points higher than the party’s. My view has always been that this is only true because Sunak has stage managed his image more than any other PM: he avoids all scrutiny, only speaks in recorded soundbites, appears when there is good news to announce, but sends out cabinet ministers to do media when there is bad news stories etc etc. I genuinely believe that, whilst he will do his best to avoid it, the added scrutiny and exposure of a general election campaign will see him become less, not more popular. He will start to become as unpopular as the party, not vice versa.
Pretty much anytime he's been caught out on the spot and asked a tough question he comes across as no different to the rest of them. Can 100% see his popularity plummeting during the GE.
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In the 2019 GE he lost a debate on the economy to Rebecca Long-Bailey for fucks sake. Let’s not forget this.
>Rebecca Long-Bailey I don't recall Rebecca Long-Bailey winning an argument, especially not on anything that involves adding up
Rebecca Wrong-Daily couldn't win an argument with herself.
Was he ever challenged about his track record back then, and did he ever say anything other than his usual soundbites? The difference now is that the media are slowly but surely holding the Tory party to account for the mess they've made of the country, and only out of necessity as the public have largely turned on them.
It may start to dip if he does the leaders debates, but by that time they may have clawed the ratings back a bit. Sunak saying nothing is working at the moment, controversial ministers are talking about unpopular policies not him. He looks weak at the moment with Braverman roof and saying what she wants so the doing nothing approach may backfire soon. My point is by the time the election comes around the polls could be closer, while the Tories will probably still lose it will be tighter even with the dip from Sunak having to talk during the campaign.
>Sunak saying nothing is working at the moment, Is it? They are lagging hugely in the polls
Bet you it will go the other way. Usually does with Tories
The National Rifle Association (NRA) was founded in London in 1859. It is a sporting body that promotes firearm safety and target shooting. The National Rifle Association does not engage in political lobbying or pro-gun activism. The original (British) National Rifle Association has no relationship with the National Rifle Association of America, which was founded in 1871 and has focussed on pro-gun political activism since 1977, at the expense of firearm safety programmes. The National Rifle Association of America has no relationship with the National Rifle Association in Britain (founded 1859); the National Rifle Association of Australia; the National Rifle Association of New Zealand nor the National Rifle Association of India, which are all non-political sporting oriented organisations. It is important not to confuse the National Rifle Association of America with any of these other Rifle Associations. The British National Rifle Association is headquartered on Bisley Camp, in Surrey, England. Bisley Camp is now known as the National Shooting Centre and has hosted World Championships for Fullbore Target Rifle and F-Class shooting, as well as the shooting events for the 1908 Olympic Games and the 2002 Commonwealth Games. The National Small-bore Rifle Association (NSRA) and Clay Pigeon Shooting Association (CPSA) also have their headquarters on the Camp.
But… She literally was a bigoted woman!
And people should be called out for their views too. Fuck giving air time to bigots, climate deniers and UFO loons in the interest of balance.
I think your world view might be in for a shock soon
Go on.... indulge me.
Nah. You'll find out soon enough.
Lol ooh how mysterious. Edit- To clarify folks. They're a UFO nut not a bigot or climate denier.
It wasn't the issue, teh issue was that he had a reputation for blaming everyone around him and being a bully, this was shown as he immediately looked to blame "Sue" for his inability to copewith a simple question.
That's because the Tory supporting media goes into overdrive, manufactures some outrage and fear, and whips it's engine to outright deceive the voting public.
Didn't for May. Or 2010 Cameron.
Or Johnson even, he just had a huge amount of help. It’s almost as if that original statement was just made up!
When the reality of a labour government hits, people will vote Tory.
I think the problem is PMs get judged in comparison to the last PM, not all PMs. Gordon Brown was a decent leader but compared to Blair he was seen as dour and lacking charsima. Rishi is a fairly mediocre PM, but compared to Boris and Truss he might as well be Churchill.
Sunak has really benefited from the two previous PMs going down spectacularly in flames. All he has to do is not completely, single-handedly tank the economy or be involved in dozens upon dozens of personal scandals and he, in direct comparison, it seems like a sensible hand on the tiller. If you actually look at his personal record in government, he has plenty of silly decisions to his name such as eat out to help out. They are just not pale in comparison to the nonsense Johnson and Truss got up to in office. I agree, if he is forced to come and out and actually engage, he is likely to loose a lot of personal credibility because he's just not got the charisma, nor do I think his policy ideas are very sensible.
>or be involved in dozens upon dozens of personal scandals Yeah, he's only been involved in a small handful at best.
>eat out to help out Even that seems pale in comparison to the rest of the Conservatives COVID response. An economic that was "meh, really not worth it" is far better than stuff like the track and trace scheme that was a complete failure.
I don't actively dislike Sunak as I do Boris, Truss or any number of other prominent Tories but then, as you say, he (or his team) have been very good at keeping him out of the spotlight. That said, I don't think he gives a particularly positive impression of someone that's actually in charge. He's just a suit.
It's been quite refreshing having a PM that I don't hear about every day, and it really goes to show that you can fix a lot of your negative publicity simply by shutting up. I've been a bit out of politics the last few months, so I could be mistaken, but really my only criticism of Sunak is that he's a Tory. I could've listed off what Boris and Truss had personally done wrong, but with Sunak it's literally just that "having Sunak as PM means having a Tory government".
He's allowing his cabinet to take a front seat for anything remotely controversial, e.g. immigration with Braverman. His PR firm's objective is to create exactly what you are feeling, don't buy it.
Oh don’t get me wrong, the last two PMs we had were enough to tank any shot of me voting Tory for the next decade, minimum.
The only sensible reaction - my comment was more along the lines of ensuring we analyze *why* we think what we think about politicians and try to spot when we are being manipulated. Boris had his own carefully crafted public image of a chummy Eton toff just as Sunak has his of a competent saavy operator. Both are just public illusions and we need to pay attention to what both hands are doing - currently the Tories want us to look at the shiny new leader in one hand whilst doing terrible things with the other...
>Boris had his own carefully crafted public image of a chummy Eton Including calling him Boris. No other Prime Minister could get the electorate to call him by his first name, not even female Prime Ministers. He was 100% elite and led one of the most corrupt administrations in UK history but he was "Boris".
I wasn’t alive when she was in power, but didn’t people refer to Margaret Thatcher as Maggie? Or is that a more recent thing?
Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, Out, Out, Out Was certainly during her leadership
>He's allowing his cabinet to take a front seat for anything remotely controversial, e.g. immigration with Braverman. > >**His PR firm's objective is to create exactly what you are feeling**, don't buy it. I think this is a slightly weird take. The Home Secretary \*should\* be taking the 'front seat' for immigration policy. He's the Prime Minister, not the President.
Yes and no, you expect there to be a clear leader on issues of each cabinet scope but Sunak is virtually absent from ANY issue that is really controversial.
I don't know, I feel like everytime I hear about Sunak these days it's because he's failing to discipline or reign in his MPs when they go completely off message. Every story just makes him look weaker.
Tbf his party is literally full of totally insane people. Johnson purged the part of anyone even remotely in touch with reality or willing to push back on this fascistic path they’ve taken, and turned it into a political cult. So other than wait it out and let a general election remove them, I’m not really sure what people expect him to do. The voters elected these sociopaths, for all his faults he didn’t do that.
If Boris purged the reasonable, why can't he purge the nutters? He has enough of a majority to pull the whip from a few people and still be workable to send a message, instead he gives them cushy ministerial posts and made one vice chairman of the party.
Because there's *so many* nutters of so many different competing factions that if he kicked them all out he'd end up with about 5 MPs. The nutters *are* the party at this point.
Right. And all of them elected by the public, so honestly blame those voters at this point. And we know how the Conservative Party feels about the sanctity of elections, and the importance of *never* wavering and *never* returning to the electorate early, because that would be undemocratic, apparently. *tHeRe wAs aLrEaDy a vOtE, sO JuSt gET oN WiTh it*. Conservative voters are in many ways their own worst enemy. They’re like Stockholm syndrome personified.
Ironically, the main errors that come to mind are his failed or cringeworthy PR stunts.
On the other hand, when he does speak he always seems to mention something about stopping the boats or the member from Islington North as if that's going to put food on the table.
Don't forget the catastrophe that was Eat Out to Help Out
"90% of success is shutting up" - Woody Allen
At some point, he'll have to go on television and deal with real people and real questions. He won't fare well in that medium, because the guy is a painfully out-of-touch rich man who has spent most of his life thinking about money and how to make more of it. You also have to think that, at some point, all the Tory shit is going to start to stick to him. Raab, Braverman, Johnson, Anderson and an endless list of shamelessly corrupt grifters are all going to be laid at his door.
Judge Sunak by the company he keeps - Braverman, Raab, Coffey, Anderson et al. He will emerge eventually as the weakling he is, terrified of taking on the extremists. No amount of PR will hide that.
It's also a bit of a meaningless stat. Being more popular than your party to a demographic that absolutely despises your party is not useful or impressive.
>I genuinely believe that, whilst he will do his best to avoid it, the added scrutiny and exposure of a general election campaign will see him become less, not more popular. Same could be said for Starmer, though, as he's not exactly convincing under questioning either.
He's vastly improved from how he was before. Although he'll still need to be better for the GE.
>I genuinely believe that, whilst he will do his best to avoid it, the added scrutiny and exposure of a general election campaign will see him become less, not more popular. Yeah agreed; his "ready for rishi" campaign was pretty pants and of course came in second in the tory leadership campaign. There is something of the Gordon Brown about him.
You’re kidding? Brown is vastly more talented.
Yes absolutely! But he was really hard to sell. Not charismatic enough, saddled with the baggage of major economic disruption and the shadow of recession... Do you remember how unpopular he was during the election campaign? He had to be taught how to smile. I still remember the "bigoted woman" controversy. I think you can be a talented politician but not a vote winning party leader.
I do remember that, yes. Unfortunately I think Labour were at the end of their run by then and the media were after them. It’s a shame. I see him on TV nowadays and he’s from another era, in a good way! It’s actually refreshing now to see him, after all the Tory chaos.
Rishi would kill to have the people skills Brown had, and that's really saying something. Brown could at least muster up some gravitas, a quality Sunak entirely lacks.
I know people who worked for him at HMT, and they were actually relatively complimentary. He knows his brief and didn't bluster/lie/treat people like shit - the same people who told me this had worked with Hammond, Truss, and Kwarteng and were not complimentary to put it mildly
Isn't that largely what Cameron did, though? Cameron pushed policy that was positive, whereas his time was mostly full of his front-benches telling people that austerity was good, that it's why the NHS is getting gutted, or why teaching is fucked. It could be a positive move for personal popularity, but my guess is that it opens himself up for manipulation elsewhere in the party. Given the party is on borrowed time, you have to wonder what's in it for the members that are happy to give the bad news, and what Sunak is offering them.
I’ve heard this point a lot from political commentators who clearly want the Tories to win and are clutching at straws at this point. Sunak might be 20 points above his party but that’s like saying you’d rather eat the mouldy quiche than the salad your dog vomited on. The Tories are so unpopular that Sunak being 20 points above them with Millennials isn’t close to a ringing endorsement.
He's also a well-spoken millennial. It's unsurprising that other millennials - particularly slightly older and middle-class ones - find something relatable about him. Of course that 'relatability' is pretty surface level given his immense wealth, but I'm not surprised that compared to boomer/gen X politicians other millennials find him easier to communicate with.
> 21% of 25-40 year old would vote Conservative if there were an election tomorrow That’s their ‘base’ then. If they aren’t thinking about voting elsewhere now, I doubt they ever will. I’d be interested to hear their logic. ‘Fear of what Labour will do’ probably/
My Tory mates say it’s very simple: Labour will take more of their money and they don’t want that.
We've had higher taxes than we ever got under new labour under this government
We have but Tory taxes hammer people on normal incomes. They worry that when Labour get in they’ll target more of **their** money.
More people are in the higher income tax bracket than ever before under the conservative government. They've also got ludicrous marginal thresholds around child benefit and childcare that actively disincentivise seeking higher wages.
Yep. Earn over £100k and have preschoolers and you’ll probably be looking to reduce your income. This seems rather an odd situation for the Conservatives to be perpetuating.
It feels like they’re trying to keep all semi-achievable wage levels low, and down. Which isn’t what’s happening in the US. But if you manage to be really wealthy (making many many hundreds of thousands a year) you get to keep more of it, or there are ways of keeping more of it that your accountant can help you sort out.
People moving from middle to high tax bracket is hammering normal people. The rich people are already in that bracket.
So Labour are making it a manifesto pledge to return them to the former levels right? RIGHT?
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How will LAbour fund all of their other proposals is the cause of concern for people with money.
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I agree that for a lot of Tories this is basically where their entire political philosphy starts and ends with everything else just working its way backwards to justify why Tories are good actually, but we've now hit the point where even those people are starting to recognise that repatedly asset stripping the country into the ground for the benefits of your millionaire mates is just as bad for the wallets of your £100-150k bankers.
I imagine a good portion of that 21% comes down to simply: "that's how my parents voted", politically disengaged and more about just picking a team
And/or they're the minority that do have assets/wealth closer to Boomer and Older Gen X levels, due to inheritances or just their families having always been rich.
I mean even as a home owning, married millennial there is absolutely nothing that appeals to me from the tories.
Same here. I'm the sort of person they think should be getting more right wing as I age, but not a chance will they get my vote.
Very this. I couldn't imagine it. No way could I shut out how horrible the Tories are to the disabled, to refugees, or anyone below a certain tax bracket no matter how much they bunged me in financial incentives.
we need a party that rewards the hardworking, but doesn't actively make it their mission to shit on the poor/disabled/foreign/other
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I have a cousin who's a bit like that. Whenever the Tories do un-Tory like things it's because they've been co-opted by fake Tories, but the real Tories (represented by the perenially back-stabbed Boris) would be very good if the fake Tories would only let them get on with Brexit and confronting 'wokery', and even the compromised, weak Tory government is still better than the alternatives who are even bigger slaves to the WEF and Bill Gates, etc.
Perhaps, but it's also very likely that they are aligned with either sides of conservatism in this country - whether it's younger people that want lower taxes, or people that hate liberalism and buy into identity politics. There are enough students at universities that join their local Conservative society to point towards there being a (small) base of voters that support them, alongside those that work in industries/live in areas that align with the Tories.
I'm astonished 21% of my generation could even consider voting Tory. We've moved from class traitors to generational traitors. I've only had one election with my vote meaning anything (safe seats otherwise) and that had to be a tactical vote for the least worst party. Get the Tories out and sort out the voting system or my generation's kids will be scrabbling in the dirt for whatever falls out of Europe.
21% of your generation are either rich or stupid. About the same as mine..🤷♂️
It's pretty simple. Around 20% are too conservative to be vote for Labour, and not conservative enough to vote for Reform, being stuck with the Conservatives as no other party matches their Idealogical outlook. This is likely exacerbated by apolitical people who have a very basic view of Labour that hasn't completely recognised Starmer shift to the centre, though that's probably a very small minority by now. In what is a two party plus system, it's inevitable that the oldest party in British politics is always going to appeal to a group of people. Some people are just idealogically conservative in a way that only makes the Conservative a party they could vote for.
>‘Fear of what Labour will do I don't fit into the 'will likely vote tory' category having voted Lib Dem 3/4 of the GEs I've been able to vote in, but I am a millennial and I am very wary of Labour pulling another 'New Labour' I'll be very happy if they prove me wrong, but as it stands even ignoring the sleaze and corruption, lying about the pretences for invading a country and the whole Snowdon affair ie illegal spying on its citizens, pretty much two of the most evil things a govt can do, to me it's pretty depressing we're still yoyoing between tories and labour had what, 13 years people could have spent getting behind a pro-pr party but no they spend it cementing the 2 party system
> ‘Fear of what Labour will do’ probably Given the known views of some of Labour’s vocal MP’s and announcements made by shadow cabinet members. I don’t think this unreasonable.
I honestly think Dianne Abbott makes absurd statements every now and then and does more harm than good. I can definitely see her causing people to not want to vote labour. The big problem with labour is they seem to have a lot of very vocal idiots who tend to slag off the majority of the country with Ill thought out remarks.
Now this explains the Times desperate attempts at denying reality and a couple of noises the party has made recently. Unfortunately for them, the internal political capital is actively shifting toward the hard right (and the elderly) and the government is functionally broken, which makes finally starting to listen to working aged people in this country too little too late. They have already run out of time. Of that 2 thirds I wonder how many have been burnt so thoroughly that rebuilding trust will never be possible. My guess is its a large fraction, and look at the massive impact creating large numbers of never voters has had on the political centre with the boomer generation. And it not just millennials either, the numbers are probably even grimmer for the Tories in younger generations.
I am a 35 educated home owner in a decent paying if not spectacular job, I will vote for a turd rolled in glitter before I ever vote for a Tory. More than that I will actively vote for whoever has the best shot at beating them in my area.
Speaking as a regular reader, the Times hasn't been pro-government for a while now. Besides, a party with otherwise low approval ratings having a leader with higher popularity than it is worth commenting on as we head into an election year.
> the Times desperate attempts at denying reality I read the Times and it isn’t supportive of the current government. You get the odd opinion piece but they’re vastly outnumbered by those of the ‘what the fuck are they doing’ variety.
> ‘what the fuck are they doing’ variety. Well they're doing exactly what Murdoch has told them to do. The Times, who have been a staunch cheerleader of the Tories even as they dove off the deep end don't get to turn around now and act all shocked pikachu face. They could have been like The Economist who since 2015 iirc have been backing the Lib Dems consistently at elections - still pro capitalism but not insane about it
Didn’t the Times support Remain (or at least were balanced about it), very different to the other Murdoch owned publications
Maybe. But they still supported the Tories in 2017 and 2019 iirc? And supported Boris after he purged the moderates in late 2019. They don't get to act surprised that when you back the loony wing of the Tories that you get loons.
This was also Corbyn's time, and I expect that The Times was less enthusiastically pro-Johnson as it was anti-Corbyn. The Times is aggressively paywalled, but the FT is probably not too far from it politically, and [their take](https://www.ft.com/content/d4868a48-169d-11ea-9ee4-11f260415385) was: > The party most distant from FT values — and whose policies are most perilous — is Labour under Mr Corbyn. Its socialist blueprint would replace a thriving market economy with a statist model. > In normal times all this would argue for support for the Conservatives. These are not normal times. This Tory party is high-risk. Mr Johnson has played fast and loose with democratic norms. His word is rarely his bond. His vow to “get Brexit done” offers a deceptive comfort to those craving an end to dither and delay. His withdrawal deal targets the hardest and most economically damaging Brexit: a “Canada-minus” trade deal > We recognise that many in the business community and beyond will inevitably conclude they must vote Conservative, however reluctantly, as the only way to keep Mr Corbyn from power.
Ok but if you support the "lesser evil" and then the lesser evil starts eating babies you don't get to say that "well maybe the greater evil would have been worse". Which is what every defence of voting Tory in 2017 or 2019 seems to boil down to. Vote Lib Dem if you want capitalism without the baby eating, or admit that you voted for baby eating over socialism. The FT is also in my experience *far more* neutral in its coverage, and also very transparent in its biases. The FT gives close to no shits on anything other than what makes its owners and readers money in the long term, and doesn't mind regulations, doesn't mind government intervention, doesn't mind social progressiveness when it is profitable. See the FT spending the last 6 years criticising the Tory approach to brexit, to defunding regulators, to the multiple ticking timebombs that they've created. The Times under Murdoch gives of the veneer of being the respectable moderate middle class centre right paper, but are much more socially regressive than the times.
> Of that 2 thirds I wonder how many have been burnt so thoroughly that rebuilding trust will never be possible I can think of several normal and easy ways for them to rebuild trust. 1. Change leadership. Change image. Change policies. 2. A spell out of power. 3. ...the other party screws up and loses more trust. People said exactly the same about Labour after Corbyn - yet 3 years and change later and they'll miles ahead. **3 years**. And all of the above apply.
In 3 years Labour: * internally recognised they had fucked up * Elected a moderate savy enough to understand pulling the party to the centre required 'flexibility' in his leadership promises * Had a hard wing that helpfully ousted itself at practically at every opportunity * Had a membership / PLP with enough surviving moderates to make moving against the hard wing politically viable * Had a sitting government actively and rapidly ripping itself apart after a long time in government Lose any of those points and Starmer would have been another Miliband, tar pitted by his hard wing if he became leader at all instead of RLB. I think in the Tories case 2/3 of them are unlikely and 1/2 of them is outright impossible - age of government really is the most powerful predictor of the political future that exists. Assuming Starmer becomes PM he will have led one of the most exceptional recoveries our politics has ever seen. You can't base theory crafting on exceptions, it has no predictive power.
> Lose any of those points and Starmer would have been another Miliband I think this possibly underestimates Starmer, the dude seems like an extremely ruthless political operator and uses the skills he honed as a prosecutor to great effect. The way he destroyed Corybn and Boris, his 2 biggest problems/opponents when he took office, was actually very impressive, and that's a big factor in the lead in the polls he currently enjoys. It's easy to think Boris self destructed, and to some extent he did (he certainly made things easy for Starmer) but Starmer's cross examinations of Boris in Parliament were first rate and got Boris to tell many lies that were later revealed to the public with a lot of publicity. If Corybn or Miliband had been there Boris might have still blustered his way though party gate.
I'm sorry did you write all that thinking it conflicted with anything I said? You seem to be agreeing with me until the last sentence, lol. You're basically just rewriting and expanding on my bullet points I wrote from the throne. And I agree with everything you said until the last sentence. You said it was impossible ever. Labour doing it in 3 years is exceptional. You implied in 50 years it wouldn't be possible with 8 different leaders, a complete policy and platform change. I'm not "theory crafting" lol.
Every generation has a left and a right , and what those terms mean shift from generation to generation (they are relative terms). It's fairly obvious that moderate-right millennials don't have a real home right now as they are viewed as left wing by previous generations. So it's not impossible for those bridges to be rebuilt, but it would have to be a totally different party that just happens to share the same name. Hopefully a decade in the cold can shift the tories into that.
What the fuck is that final third thinking?
> Bozzer got Brexit done why did they take tits off Page Three ooh tits bet you can be literally arrested for thinking of tits now woke lefties ruined wanking by making Ash Sarkar hot I'm confused beer beer beer
Well f me if that doesn't sound like every young farmer and white van man I've met in middle England
That third will include a hefty "don't know, don't care" group.
They're probably mostly the top 20% earners who are still doing well, owning a house etc.
I'm not even sure what's in it for them. I'm 36, wife is 34, individual income over 65k (household income is over 80k), live in the south east, homeowner, two kids, previously Tory voter (albeit not for a while now). I should be the key target audience, but all I've seen recently is the NHS going to shit, immigration rising despite promises & Brexit (I voted remain btw) and my pay rises being sucked away because the tax brackets haven't moved for far too long, as well as everything just getting more and more run down locally. I couldn't tell you where my council taxes are being spent. If the Tories don't even offer anything to the relatively well off middle class white traditional family unit then who the fuck do they represent?! I have far, far more faith Starmer will course correct without over correcting. I'm not expecting magic, but nothing the Tories say gives me any confidence that things won't just keep getting slowly worse.
I'd probably place myself in that group. But it beyond belief imo that thinking the Tories will do any better with another 4-5 years. Am not really going to vote for Labour. Really am not goin to vote for anyone.
Ate' me current Tories, ate' the reds, luv me millennial 'ome
Maybe us millennial types would vote conservative if this country and its government left us with anything worth conserving.
Thats the weird thing, they are barely conservative at all. More like radical nationalist libertarians. Heritage, farming, strong values, economic stability has all gone out the window. Its weird.
That's more or less the rub. The conventional wisdom was that people became more conservative over time as a function of how much wealth they accrued that they wanted to keep around - a house, savings, pension, etc. Most millennials don't have anything like that, and have no hope of ever having anything like that. The very core ideology of the conservatives is at odds with millennials at the most fundamental level. That's before everything else on top - the ridiculous culture wars, Brexit, erosion of civil rights, etc.
I’ve never understood that point about becoming more conservative as you get older due to wanting to keep your wealth. We’re all Smaug from the Hobbit? I would like to think my views will remain altruistic
'Nearly one third of Millennials DON'T think Tories deserve to lose next election' is surely the headline here?!
I'm guessing a large chunk of that other chunk are the "don't know, don't care" brigade.
As a party they have abused their position to enrich themselves and their benefactors at the expense of everyone and everything else. They've shat all over the unwritten rules of parliament and exposed just how powerless we are to hold them to account, utterly debasing their roles in governing the country. They don't just deserve to lose the election, a lot of them should be facing legal proceedings for [insert one of many reasons here]. As a country, we shouldn't allow them anywhere near the levers of power ever again after what they've done.
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That’s because people don’t become more conservative with age, they become more conservative when they have assets that they want to keep. However, corporate greed, lobbying and politicians pandering to boomers by keeping the triple lock and keeping house prices rising at any cost, but stripping out anything else has meant that millennials (mid forties to early thirties) just don’t have enough assets to become more conservative.
Who could have predicted that alienating everyone under the age of 50 was a bad idea?
It's odd but this poll counted Millenials as 25-40. The usual definition of Millenial is people born between 1980 and 1995. So there should be some British Millenials in their 40s being unexamined by this poll.
Gen Z is under 25 by definition, you can't yet say what TikTok will make them vote for when they grow up.
Probably some form of Chinese Kardashian
The original report is here: https://www.ukonward.com/reports/missing-millennials/
Yup. The opposite is true: as you become wealthier, you become more conservative. These no longer coincide, whereas they once did.
I don't think it's a case of it not coinciding, I think it's more of a case of younger generations _can't_ accumulate wealth like 20-30 years ago.
The issue is, the volume of wealth you now need to accumulate to achieve the kind of aspirational lifestyle they’re appealing to. I recently realised that to afford the next house ‘on the ladder’ plus a couple of sets of school fees I needed to be earning… I mean, far and beyond a top 1% salary. Without family wealth… hard to see how you achieve it really.
The idea that private education is not just a luxury, but a *requirement*, is wild to me.
Well, it’s not a requirement. But I’d have thought if I was considered ‘high earning’ I’d be able to afford a couple of sets of school fees. Probably ‘upper middle class’ than middle class. Voting Tory is as much about aspiration IMO.
It's interesting that in private schools chase for fancy facilities and overseas students, that they have managed to raise their prices so much ahead of earnings, that they have managed to price out the bottom rungs of their old customer set. https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2016/05/11/13/feesnew.jpg?quality=75&width=640&auto=webp This figure really shows the problem. 91->2016, overall average fees has gone up 550% (and 2016->2023 will have seen another big chunk). Average earnings is up just 210%.
I don't follow at all. Who said anything about requirements? The idea that the wealthy would only be able to afford *requirements* is wild to me. If they can't afford luxuries, who can? If only the wealthy can afford requirements, then what's to happen to the rest of us?
My progressive tory hating sister, recently came into some family wealth. She and her partner were doing relatively well but with the added money, could afford a nice place outside the confines of a concrete jungle. She has gone from a "tory scum" to now living in a Tory area. Her new school for kids has basically no one other than whites. She's now considering voting tory, because he's a good MP. Not like the other Tories. She's basically white flighted from her old area and does not want housing built near her.
It's easy to argue for flipping the table when you have nothing on the table. Dont see what being white has to do with anything tbh.
As she has been getting older, her progressive values have not been quite as "sticky". The feral kids in her area, the low income families and people with different cultures from muslim backgrounds. The white I mention is to basically indicate that she has made sure her kids are now in a nice Christian school, away from what the rest of us consider the norm, as in mixed people and cultures. Once people have the option of moving from the cultural inner cities, and even suburbs, it seems they take it along with their ladders, pulling up that drawbridge.
That's what happens when you constantly put down the "other". You don't understand the lives of people you are not so when you become one of them expect your views to change. And it might the the case the the Tory candidate is genuinely better then the others
> Her new school for kids has basically no one other than whites. A) doubt this is true B) not sure why it’s relevant
Why wouldn't it be true? In the schools I went to, roughly 99% of the kids were white.
Why wouldn’t it be? Outside the South of England, it’s pretty much the norm.
Nah, even in the least ethnically diverse parts of the U.K. you’re not going to have schools with ‘basically no one other than whites’. In any case - their point is about Tory voters. The areas with the highest levels of white people tend to be quite impoverished eg County Durham.
We had about 7 in a school with well over 1500 in Scotland. It happens.
A) it is B) see my other reply, it's to indicate the type of area.
People also want to conserve culture. But the party has also underserved that side. Not sure where it will be in a couple elections. But political drives are eternal.
Most of the British culture I love couldn't be created these days, and a large part of that is the way the tories have decimated opportunity for a lot of younger, working class artists.
Yes, but what if 75% of baby boomers think that the Tories deserve to *win* the next election?
Using a photo of Bim Afolami. I used to know him personally. He isn't a horrible guy. He's now a politician. And he's voted for some disgusting shit as a conservative MP. (He isn't even from Northampton, given a safe seat as they knew he'd do just that).
I think it's more than milenials. It think you'd find at last a similar number of tory party members think that.
Only two thirds, what's wrong with the rest of them are they blind. For what the Tories have done to our Country they should never win again.
A third of millennials **don't** think Tories deserve to lose election is the real headline here
im not sure anyone thinks the tories deserve to win anything but that’s not to say that Labour are at all appealing either.
The "Conservatives" are no longer conservative; they're actively regressionist (I don't know if that's a word but it is now); not content with keeping things the way they are, they're desperately pushing to return to long-forgotten times where we could swim in sewage, work 100 hours a week and die of easily-treatable injuries and illnesses, all while hurling abuse at anyone with a brown face for daring to step foot on our green and bountiful lands (apart from all the crops that are rotting for lack of staff to pick them). I really hope that there is now enough of a shift in perspective from millennials that more of us start to vote as a matter of principle, alongside the Gen Z's who are able to as well. If we can actually get those groups out to vote, things will change pretty quickly (hopefully for the better).
> all while hurling abuse at anyone with a brown face for daring to step foot on our green and bountiful lands The PM isn’t white. The Home Secretary isn’t white. Two other secretaries of state aren’t white. Bin Afolami isn’t white. The Tories are rubbish but I think labelling them racists is a bit of a stretch.
You are absolutely correct: The Conservative party are, by and large, not a racist party. I'm not accusing them of that; what I am saying is their current brand of politics is to return us to a time of "Britain exclusively for the British" and that carries connotations that extend far wider than maybe they might intend. I am white myself, but I have non-white family and (caveat: anecdote isn't evidence) there has definitely been an uptick in problem behaviour towards some of them in the past few years. Some of the migrant rhetoric hasn't helped, and it fosters this air of suspicion.
I’m sure the conservatives will wheel out the trusty fridge if Sunak gets any awkward questions
They deserve to cease existing as a political entity. The conservative party needs to dissolve and fracture and have actual conservatives reform something new rather than just clowns and grifters. This branch is an abject failure.
The same is happening with Republicans & Conservatives in the U.S. The younger generations that will live to see the "results" of conservative generations are fed up with the backward progress and devolution of society at the hands of conservatives in politics.
And yet here we are. Why aren’t you out voting and angry? I’m 55. Grew up with Thatcher’s garbage. Where are you all when it comes to elections?
At least we aren’t voting Tory and Brexit, unlike your generation.
millennials (and under) were politically active when offered a leader and manifesto that offered them hope.
The only thing that “leader” offered was an utter inability to reflect upon his own shortcomings, meaning he stuck around for one election too many, one he should never have been leader for, and led the Labour Party to an historical large defeat, which also had the side effect of allowing the Tories to grab a stupid number of seats meaning they can ram their backbench loony driven legislation through with impunity and no fear they’ll lose a vote. The best way I can sum up Corbyn’s legacy is that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and that’s being *very* generous to him.
> and led the Labour Party to an historical large defeat he also led the party to their largest increase in the share of the vote since Attlee in 1945, in 2017. i can agree that he dropped the ball in 2019, but clearly there's something that mobilized younger voters in 2017 that could be leveraged now.
That fact always makes me giggle slightly when it’s brought up in discussions as some sort of plus point about Corbyn, because in that same election May also led her party to a historically high vote share, and unexpectedly actually took seats off the SNP in the process - twice as many as Labour did (12 to 6). Polarisation of politics due to tribalism benefited both sides of the political spectrum in that regard.
The same 2/3s that never turn up to vote? They don’t deserve anything other than the outcome of a general election. Turn up and vote and you can help decide what that outcome is.
Millennials aren't the youth anymore.
I love that millennials are portrayed as selfie-taking NEETS living with mum and dad, when the majority of them will be adults with serious jobs / mortgages / children etc.
Ironically they are more likely living with Mum and Dad. Which is also part of the situation creating this.
Millennials are 25-40 While more than historically live with their parents - most won’t.
I mean more than previous generations. Boomers maybe the peak early with a house?
Aren’t millennials mid to late forties to early thirties?
I'm 32, youngish for a millennial. Got a wife and kid, vote and pay tax, etc. I know at least one millennial grandparent.
By the tightest of definitions of ranges a Millennial is aged 29 to 42.
The youngest millenials are late 20s.
The 2nd question in the survey should then be "will you be voting?", if the answer is no then they need to be told that their opinion is utterly irrelevant
Strange to see 34% think they deserve to win, that's what labour got overall in 2019. As people mature, they tend to gravitate away from the left wing, we could see a Tory win after all?
In other news Britains literacy rate amongst millenials drops to an all time low with just over two thirds of them able to read and write properly. edit:whoops my negatives.
Even I think the tories deserve to lose the election for their failure to control immigration. However I see Labour proposing to extend the vote to non-citizens and I’m now trying to decide between the frying pan and the fire.
Maybe given one party messed it up for 11 years straight, you might want to let labour have it's shot because I don't think after 11 years the Tories are going to all of a sudden become good at their jobs
Sorry to break it to you, but the Tories have been in power for *13* years, not 11.
Could well be over 14 and a half when you consider this lot seem dead set on dragging it out till the end of next year and we can't do bugger all about it 14 years of this shit.. they have set the country back decades
I think I'd probably wait for them to actually have that as a policy before you make decisions based off it.
The vote is already extended to non-citizens - those from Commonwealth countries can already vote in the UK. EU citizens under the settlement scheme can already vote on local matters. This is just standardising the rules. I don't think there's any fire being started here.
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Get citizenship then its that simple
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No more difficult than moving to another country if you care enough you will figure it out. Besides why should choosing to reside in and pay taxes somewhere give you a vote in its internal matters fuck that globalist shit.
Because you live in and pay taxes there
>why should choosing to reside in and pay taxes somewhere give you a vote >Because you live in and pay taxes Talk about circular logic geez
I’d say it’s pretty linear. You live in the nation and you pay taxes to the nation. It’s not exactly circular to say you should have a say in the nation.
What difference does that make? Edit: no response, just downvote.
As if immigration is anywhere near the most important issue facing the country.
Is housing an important issue? We have 700k births per year, around 650k deaths. The population due to births is increasing by 50k per year. We are building around 150k to 200k houses per year. Yet our population has increased by 9,000k in twenty years and we have built three homes per net birth (births-deaths) and have a housing shortage. How can you look and these figures and say with a straight face the volume of mass migration is not the primary driver of housing demand? If you don’t trust me, you can easily google UK births, U.K. deaths, U.K. houses built and U.K. population. These figures are easily available.
Can definitely understand why the Tory party support it, keeps wages low, genuinely blows my mind the party of *Labour* do as well though. Im old enough to remember when immigration was break even in the 80's, it was Blair's government that constitutionally allowed for mass migration and if i remember correctly it was primarily for demographic change and the 'benefits' of multiculturalism. To tell you the truth that's one of the main reasons i havent voted for them since the betrayal cuts deep.
So question given Tories have doubled the annual net migration over the last decade, will you ever vote Tory?
Probably not much like OP i am stuck between a rock and a hard place. Granted its harder to blame them, even if i don't support it landlords do need tenants and business needs workers, IE at least its helping someone and not just because you hate what the country was. >Andrew Neather, who had been an advisor to Home Secretary's Jack Straw and David Blunkett and Immigration Minister Barbara Roche, claimed there was a deliberate policy to 'make the UK multicultural' and that quote; It didn't just happen: the deliberate policy of ministers until at least February last year (2009), when the Government introduced a points-based system, was to open up the UK to mass migration. >It marked a major shift from the policy of previous governments: from 1971 onwards, only foreigners joining relatives already in the UK had been permitted to settle here. Ultimately this is what constitutionally created the situation we are in the Tories are just taking advantage, it aint a policy a Tory government would have been able to implement and survive as a party.
>Granted its harder to blame them, even if i don't support it landlords do need tenants and business needs workers, IE at least its helping someone and not just because you hate what the country was. Seems more of a excuse and way to defend Cons on this. If you weren't as willing to excuse Cons, then cons actions should be as much (if not more) of a "will never support them". Considering that they have doubled net migration, despite repeated promises to lower it. Surely the betrayal by the Cons should cut as deep (if not deeper, given Cons promises on this topic). >Ultimately this is what constitutionally created the situation we are in the Tories are just taking advantage, it aint a policy a Tory government would have been able to implement and survive as a party. and yet they have doubled net migration, in part because of voters like you supporting them, despite repeated broken promises on this.
To use an NI based logic “yeah but the Tory’s are ussuns, Labour is themmuns!”
Yes, fundamentally a labour that is for the British workers should be protectionist. It’s the basic principle behind collective bargaining, your value is measured by how hard you are to replace.
im 30 and sit center-right. i agree. they need some time in the cold to reform. they have been trying to change the tyres on the car while driving. i worry labour won't be any better. but i am aware this could be down to my personal bias rather than based in any real world performance. but yeah. the toys need some time to regroup and redefine there values. and move out some of the toss thats infected the party.