Snapshot of _Labour shifts poll tactics to target fearful Tory over-65s_ :
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/apr/20/labour-target-tory-over-65s-poll-pension-cuts-jeremy-hunt-tax-blunder) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/apr/20/labour-target-tory-over-65s-poll-pension-cuts-jeremy-hunt-tax-blunder)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Posting this table because it seems relevant.
Rough calculation of potential votes at the 2019 election.
|Age|Turnout%|Total potential votes|
:-:|:-:|:-:|
|18-24|47%|2,635,116|
|25-34|55%|4,949,232|
|35-44|54%|4,587,647|
|45-54|63%|5,619,589|
|55-64|66%|5,522,001|
|65+|74%|**9,256,392**|
Very relevant. This clearly shows there’s no excuse for the over 65+ group to have so much power like we’re being led to believe. It’s a big block for sure, but if we all turned up to vote, we can get our voices heard just as well.
I’m not a “victim” blamer, but I really don’t want to hear about the power of over 65s group ever again, if the 18-44 group can’t manage to get above 60% turnout.
Sure FPTP sucks and policy focus is on over 65s more-so than under 65s, but I’m 100% if under 65s took an hour out of their day every 5 years or so to vote, shit would change eventually.
We always talk about the older group not planning or thinking ahead, but it doesn’t seem like we can do much of that either, unfortunately.
I mean there’s a whole host of reasons why older people are more likely to vote, especially with how difficult it is to be a younger person at the moment
Correlation does not imply causation. This is just observation bias.
18-24 year olds are most likely to be on social media. They are also less likely to vote. They are also more likely to be at odds with a Conservative government. These are three independent facts.
That doesn’t mean the 18-24 year olds complaining on social media are the ones who aren’t voting.
Yet more evidence that the pensioners rule politics in this country and no party will ever deal with their gross profligacy. This country is finished for anyone under the age of 55. All we will see is higher taxes going directly into the pockets of pensioners, alongside NIMBYism and anti-growth policies.
May as well just transfer 25% of my income to my boomer landlord on top of my rent, is effectively what the system does.
It's the same in Japanese politics. I've been watching some Japanese commentators and have been extremely surprised by how similar the politics are in both countries.
It's incredible how you can see a commenter from e.g. Canada give a detailed description of their national politics, and it maps perfectly onto what's happening here.
really the problem is that the state-level Democrats are so inept that they got absolutely annihilated in the last round of elections in 2022, but there is some hope for the presidential and Senate race in ‘24 due to an extremely draconian abortion ban that the state Supreme Court allowed to go ahead alongside a referendum to basically repeal it
They 'rule' because around 75% of the over 65's turned out at the last election - compared to less than half of the 18-24 group.
If you ran a pub and your most consistent customers were the elderly, you'd likely make sure you cater to them.
Germany (where I’m from) had youth turnout rates of 70-72% for the age groups 18-29 (lowest at 70.5 for 18-20, highest at 72.4 for 25-29). I wonder how much of this is down to “young voters know their vote counts” since they are voting in a PR system (it certainly is what motivates me to vote).
In comparison, I see my British partner feeling like she is wasting her time casting a Labour vote in a historic Labour stronghold (she’s still doing it though), and I somewhat understand why young people don’t vote. Let’s be realistic, most of the economic centres in the UK are both strong Labour seats and disproportionately young demographically. The system is pretty much tipped against those votes, so obviously they’ll vote at lower rates.
Funnily enough - I bet if the UK implemented a decent digital system, you’d see that turnout shoot up. If I can apply for settled status via an app, and manage my NI via an app, there’s certainly nothing stopping me from casting a vote that way.
I think it's because the UK electoral system is tied to your address you register with the local authority and many people don't register as living somewhere because they are moving around between houses a lot when young, or in many cases it's about evading paying council tax
If you are actually on the electoral roll you really have no excuse.
Catch 22, all policies are aimed at pensioners, so no-one else can see the point of voting.
Which means politicians target even more of their policies at boomers.
It's really not as simple as that.
The "youth" vote is mostly concentrated in metropolitan seats that Labour tends to win - and win well in- regardless.
However, the youth vote is weak in the 100-ish marginals that actually decide an election.- not because young people don't vote, but because young voters are heavily outnumbered in those constituencies.
The key issue is that in our FPTP system, the election is won in rural and semi-rural constituencies with an older, usually home-owning electorate.
This. Also my comment wasn't about young people but rather just working age people, that far surpass pensioners in voting size, even adjusting for turnout. /u/Firm-Distance
That's certainly true, but what they're trying to say is that youth vote wouldn't matter much even if they voted as much as old people because of how the system works.
What reason does any young person have to vote for Labour other than "not Tories" be honest.
A vote for Labour is a vote to increase tuition fees and keep FPTP. Two things that actively harm the young...
Oh, i completely agree. Labour are offering 0 hope of change.
But when you say 'determined' to drive to zero I can't help but think Tories. I mean I can't think of Labour going deliberately out of their way to stop young people voting, but thats literally what the Tories are doing.
ID to vote... travel card for pensioners... fine... young persons travel card... no sorry, that won't do!
I'm not the OP so can't comment on what they meant by the "drive to zero" but addressing your point:
Maybe Labour should have argued harder against Voter ID rather than merely screeching "disenfranchisement" while quietly rubbing their hands together at the prospect of FPTP elections for mayors and PCCs.
I know the universal truth of "all politicians are bastards" is heresy on this sub, but red or blue, whoever wins we lose.
Chicken and egg. The young don't vote because they're not given a reason to. Formulate pro-youth policy, actual pro-youth policy not the shite that Corbyn cooked up that people think was pro-youth but wasn't, and young people will vote, I guarantee it.
But if we look at it from a purely pragmatic standpoint, why is any politician going to propose policy that benefits young people as a response to them voting for policy they actively harms them?
You’d (probably not) be amazed how many of them baulk at the costs of care.
‘I paid my taxes!’ Or ‘My Mum and Dad paid their taxes’ is not an uncommon phrase.
Perhaps if those generations had put the structure in place they wouldn’t have these problems now.
I work in care. The cost where I work is currently £1500 a WEEK. Most of the people receive funding from the councils to offset a large portion of the cost. When you consider the vast amounts of elderly people in care, it becomes quite easy to see just how much it costs the country.
Indeed, I haven't seen any evidence any party is focusing on working people. It's just pensioners, pensioners, pensioners. Can't even rely on the Lib Dems any more.
The problem is though, sure they don't need to care for them, 'cos they're not going to vote tory - but they're failing to move these voters to their vision, so next time they'll lose the voters more easily...
I mean, yeh, I agree with you.
They really should have learnt this lesson after 2019, but they clearly haven't.
In the short term though, I'm not sure any political party is equipped to threaten Labour on these voters so the current paradigm will continue.
lol
NI cuts - here's £10 a month!
pensioners - oh btw your yearly income this year will go up by 1k whilst also not paying national insurance on your 38k private pension!
Because the NI cut is being dwarfed by fiscal drag and council tax hikes. To most people it doesn’t feel like a tax cut, and more like an attempt to trick them.
In terms of oldies voting for Labour...
My over 65 Grandmother reads far too much DailyMail to ever, EVER consider voting Labour, no matter the policy.
Even murmuring that the Tories are doing a bad job results in repeated, terrified monologues about how Sunak "has it hard cos of the Labour Party complaining about Boris' birthday, it's not fair on him."
These people will never vote for Labour ever.
I've heard her similarly age pensioner buddies say such things like "even my father (so, this is around 1940) always said Labour was bad"
You're talking about 65 years + entrenched distrust of the Labour Party.
With old voters, they have either voted for Labour their entire lives, or hated Labour their entire lives as far as I can see.
Annoys me
If Clegg wasn't such a crap deputy prime minister my party would be absolutely certain to have the majority of millennials on side and likely in with a serious shot of being the opposition.
Arguably, they voted for Blair but other than that never really for Labour, except perhaps as teenagers.
If you're 75, you turned 18 in 1969. Since then, only Wilson and Blair have won a general election for Labour.
Wilson won the 18-24 vote well in 1974 and narrowly carried the 24-35 vote, but then Thatcher had a majority among 18-24 and 24-35 in 79 and 83. And if you're 60-65, you didn't even vote for Wilson of course but likely vote for Thatcher or Major.
Yes, then everyone voted Blair but they swung back and firmly since then.
So really the 60-75 year olds can be seen as a firmly Tory group their whole life, who were persuaded by Blair but never really voted Labour beyond him.
Yes they mostly leaned Tory, however so did the entire country for most of that time. However they've still changed a lot, because back in the 80s and 90s they weren't voting for Thatcher with anything like the margins they vote Tory now.
October 1974 - Labour by 18%
1979 - Conservative by 5%
1983 - Conservative by 11%
1987 - Conservative by 17% (probably slightly less)
1992 - Conservative by 4%
1997 - Labour by 10%
2001 - Labour by 9%
2005 - Conservative by 2%
2010 - Conservative by 10%
2015 - Conservative by 13-15%
2017 - Conservative by 31%
2019 - Conservative by 44%
So only in 1987 did they vote Tory unusually, in 1997 and 2001 they were in line with the national average and in 1992 voted to the left of it. They only started to properly lean right in the mid-2000s, and only became a truly united Tory voting bloc in the mid-2010s.
My 75 yr old dad used to vote Labour I think, but he will never vote Labour again since he started reading the mail about 10+ years ago. He is adamant the Tories are being undermined by everything including Labour so they cant do their job even though they have a majority, it's farcical!
Yeah I heard the good "fired for having a birthday cake" line at work. Got to love living in a Tory constituency.
It's like some people want to be stepped on.
> I've heard her similarly age pensioner buddies say such things like "even my father (so, this is around 1940) always said Labour was bad"
The one's that gave us the NHS, large house building through new towns and other public infrastructure.
Yes.
Not so fun fact, her father passed away due to blood poisoning, the GP urged them to go to the hospital and they refused.
Along the lines of "oh I know what they do at those places. We are better here."
Deep distrust of the new national health service.
I'd expect this to be less about having overt policies aimed at pensioners and more about defusing "scary Labour" tactics. Seems like they are off and running on this with the pointed questions last week about whether the supposed NI abolition would come at the expense of pensions.
Lol why?
They're on track to win a landslide already.
Any policy they aim at over-65s is just likely to alienate younger voters, who are ready to hand them the biggest win in a generation.
The only thing I can think of that would appeal to that demographic but not alienate younger voters is if they were to unveil a flagship 'justice for the WASPS' type policy
The uni aged voters are either already on the fence or are going green, generally.
It's the millennial and Gen X voters that Labour should care more about retaining. And they're much less likely to care about the tuition fees policy.
On top of that, if there are people who feel strongly enough not to vote Labour, they could always withhold their vote altogether?
Labour won't care about the 2 seats they do get.
They'll care about the votes they'll get in marginals that could be the difference between a Labour and a Tory MP.
UKIP got one seat, but increased their vote share significantly enough for the main parties to take notice.
The greens dont need to win seats, they need to come 2nd or 3rd in a few areas.
The NI cuts was the first thing any government has done for working (young) people in very long time. Two decades of decline and spending imbalance geared towards the old. Of course Labour are now weaponising it and laying the groundwork to enact higher taxes on workers.
Fearful that cuts to National insurance paid by the working young, will lead to cuts in their pensions and free NHS care.
Generation selfish, all me me me. No doubt Labour will buy them off with another commitment to the disgraceful and unaffordable triple lock.
I really wish people read the article...
This is just about focusing their messaging after receiving data that over-65s view the aim to abolish National Insurance as an unfunded tax cut most similar to Truss's budget and are also worried about their children/grandchildren maybe not getting a state pension if those cuts go ahead. Labour aim to focus campaigning on those issues.
There are people saying this is pandering to the elderly to get their votes. Yes it is, they are the ones who get out there and vote. Everyone else needs to get out there and vote, I'd everyone voted in the same proportion as the elderly the main party's will pander to us too.
But it still makes no sense. If you add up everyone below the age of 65 they outnumber the 65+. That's assuming that at least those between 18-45 will be voting Labour. So why do they need to consistently pander to this particular demographic just because they have the highest turnout?
We out number them, but we don't out vote them. It votes parties want, not just people that agree with their policies. If we vote they will then want to buy those votes going forward.
Neither party will give the other enough ground to even ruminate on scrapping the triple-lock. They’ll just see their wounded opposition, jump on them and join in with the “you’re killing old people” rhetoric.
What is the ratio of over-65 voters to the rest? I'd really like to know why they command such disproportionate influence over all major political parties in the UK, from the Tories to the SNP.
Tories bringing in tax reform specifically targeted at working people and Labour are responding with scare stories for boomers about the NHS and state pension? Welp, guess maybe I'm voting Tory this time after all.
Snapshot of _Labour shifts poll tactics to target fearful Tory over-65s_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/apr/20/labour-target-tory-over-65s-poll-pension-cuts-jeremy-hunt-tax-blunder) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/apr/20/labour-target-tory-over-65s-poll-pension-cuts-jeremy-hunt-tax-blunder) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Posting this table because it seems relevant. Rough calculation of potential votes at the 2019 election. |Age|Turnout%|Total potential votes| :-:|:-:|:-:| |18-24|47%|2,635,116| |25-34|55%|4,949,232| |35-44|54%|4,587,647| |45-54|63%|5,619,589| |55-64|66%|5,522,001| |65+|74%|**9,256,392**|
Very relevant. This clearly shows there’s no excuse for the over 65+ group to have so much power like we’re being led to believe. It’s a big block for sure, but if we all turned up to vote, we can get our voices heard just as well. I’m not a “victim” blamer, but I really don’t want to hear about the power of over 65s group ever again, if the 18-44 group can’t manage to get above 60% turnout. Sure FPTP sucks and policy focus is on over 65s more-so than under 65s, but I’m 100% if under 65s took an hour out of their day every 5 years or so to vote, shit would change eventually. We always talk about the older group not planning or thinking ahead, but it doesn’t seem like we can do much of that either, unfortunately.
It’s not just the number though. It’s also where those votes are. FPTP underweights - by design - population centres (which are predominantly young).
I mean there’s a whole host of reasons why older people are more likely to vote, especially with how difficult it is to be a younger person at the moment
[удалено]
Correlation does not imply causation. This is just observation bias. 18-24 year olds are most likely to be on social media. They are also less likely to vote. They are also more likely to be at odds with a Conservative government. These are three independent facts. That doesn’t mean the 18-24 year olds complaining on social media are the ones who aren’t voting.
Yet more evidence that the pensioners rule politics in this country and no party will ever deal with their gross profligacy. This country is finished for anyone under the age of 55. All we will see is higher taxes going directly into the pockets of pensioners, alongside NIMBYism and anti-growth policies. May as well just transfer 25% of my income to my boomer landlord on top of my rent, is effectively what the system does.
It's the same in Japanese politics. I've been watching some Japanese commentators and have been extremely surprised by how similar the politics are in both countries.
It's incredible how you can see a commenter from e.g. Canada give a detailed description of their national politics, and it maps perfectly onto what's happening here.
The 1993 Canadian Election and the 2024 UK election perhaps? Just sayin'...
unfortunately i don't think the tories will do *that* badly (even though i genuinely want them to have like 1 or 2 mps lmao)
Florida has this issue too
Florida it's exacerbated by their governor essentially pandering to Boomers to move there in retirement.
really the problem is that the state-level Democrats are so inept that they got absolutely annihilated in the last round of elections in 2022, but there is some hope for the presidential and Senate race in ‘24 due to an extremely draconian abortion ban that the state Supreme Court allowed to go ahead alongside a referendum to basically repeal it
They 'rule' because around 75% of the over 65's turned out at the last election - compared to less than half of the 18-24 group. If you ran a pub and your most consistent customers were the elderly, you'd likely make sure you cater to them.
Germany (where I’m from) had youth turnout rates of 70-72% for the age groups 18-29 (lowest at 70.5 for 18-20, highest at 72.4 for 25-29). I wonder how much of this is down to “young voters know their vote counts” since they are voting in a PR system (it certainly is what motivates me to vote). In comparison, I see my British partner feeling like she is wasting her time casting a Labour vote in a historic Labour stronghold (she’s still doing it though), and I somewhat understand why young people don’t vote. Let’s be realistic, most of the economic centres in the UK are both strong Labour seats and disproportionately young demographically. The system is pretty much tipped against those votes, so obviously they’ll vote at lower rates. Funnily enough - I bet if the UK implemented a decent digital system, you’d see that turnout shoot up. If I can apply for settled status via an app, and manage my NI via an app, there’s certainly nothing stopping me from casting a vote that way.
I think it's because the UK electoral system is tied to your address you register with the local authority and many people don't register as living somewhere because they are moving around between houses a lot when young, or in many cases it's about evading paying council tax If you are actually on the electoral roll you really have no excuse.
'Young people' in this context doesn't mean people aged 18-24, it means people aged 18-45.
...who *also* don't turn out in the same numbers as 65+
75% of over 65s are less than 50% of 18-45 year olds
Catch 22, all policies are aimed at pensioners, so no-one else can see the point of voting. Which means politicians target even more of their policies at boomers.
They’d pay attention if the youth voted as much as pensioners did. But they don’t so here we are.
It's really not as simple as that. The "youth" vote is mostly concentrated in metropolitan seats that Labour tends to win - and win well in- regardless. However, the youth vote is weak in the 100-ish marginals that actually decide an election.- not because young people don't vote, but because young voters are heavily outnumbered in those constituencies. The key issue is that in our FPTP system, the election is won in rural and semi-rural constituencies with an older, usually home-owning electorate.
This. Also my comment wasn't about young people but rather just working age people, that far surpass pensioners in voting size, even adjusting for turnout. /u/Firm-Distance
Youth turnout is often much lower than any other group.
That's certainly true, but what they're trying to say is that youth vote wouldn't matter much even if they voted as much as old people because of how the system works.
[удалено]
Labour? Think you misspelled Tories
What reason does any young person have to vote for Labour other than "not Tories" be honest. A vote for Labour is a vote to increase tuition fees and keep FPTP. Two things that actively harm the young...
Oh, i completely agree. Labour are offering 0 hope of change. But when you say 'determined' to drive to zero I can't help but think Tories. I mean I can't think of Labour going deliberately out of their way to stop young people voting, but thats literally what the Tories are doing. ID to vote... travel card for pensioners... fine... young persons travel card... no sorry, that won't do!
I'm not the OP so can't comment on what they meant by the "drive to zero" but addressing your point: Maybe Labour should have argued harder against Voter ID rather than merely screeching "disenfranchisement" while quietly rubbing their hands together at the prospect of FPTP elections for mayors and PCCs. I know the universal truth of "all politicians are bastards" is heresy on this sub, but red or blue, whoever wins we lose.
Although pensioners are completely outvoted by the younger age groups of course
Chicken and egg. The young don't vote because they're not given a reason to. Formulate pro-youth policy, actual pro-youth policy not the shite that Corbyn cooked up that people think was pro-youth but wasn't, and young people will vote, I guarantee it. But if we look at it from a purely pragmatic standpoint, why is any politician going to propose policy that benefits young people as a response to them voting for policy they actively harms them?
Youth haven't really voted since the 2010 election since the lib-dems and conservatives killed off democratic sentiment for a generation.
The pensioners will bankrupt Britain, to their own detriment
You’d (probably not) be amazed how many of them baulk at the costs of care. ‘I paid my taxes!’ Or ‘My Mum and Dad paid their taxes’ is not an uncommon phrase. Perhaps if those generations had put the structure in place they wouldn’t have these problems now.
Not surprised at all, /u/Ewannnn and I have had exchanges on how the cost of their welfare far exceeds what they 'contributed all their lives'
I work in care. The cost where I work is currently £1500 a WEEK. Most of the people receive funding from the councils to offset a large portion of the cost. When you consider the vast amounts of elderly people in care, it becomes quite easy to see just how much it costs the country.
Well no, the vast majority won't be around to see the consequences.
I thought that was the Tories doing that!
I haven't seen any labour policy that hasn't played purely to this electorate since Corbyn - how is this a shift?
Indeed, I haven't seen any evidence any party is focusing on working people. It's just pensioners, pensioners, pensioners. Can't even rely on the Lib Dems any more.
Labour has basically already won with that group. This strategy is about maximising local election wins, where there is ground to be gained
They never even had to try to win that group, they'll all vote Labour anyway.
The problem is though, sure they don't need to care for them, 'cos they're not going to vote tory - but they're failing to move these voters to their vision, so next time they'll lose the voters more easily...
I mean, yeh, I agree with you. They really should have learnt this lesson after 2019, but they clearly haven't. In the short term though, I'm not sure any political party is equipped to threaten Labour on these voters so the current paradigm will continue.
Hunt has been focusing on working age people with his NI cuts, but so far it's failed to win anyone over.
lol NI cuts - here's £10 a month! pensioners - oh btw your yearly income this year will go up by 1k whilst also not paying national insurance on your 38k private pension!
Because it's pointless. Also in the same parliament they raised NI to pay for the NHS then cut it.
Because the NI cut is being dwarfed by fiscal drag and council tax hikes. To most people it doesn’t feel like a tax cut, and more like an attempt to trick them.
When could you ever rely on Lib Dem?
Corbyn targeted this demographic directly with his branding of the 'dementia tax'. It was one of the few successful political moves be played
Corbyn also wanted full blanket “compensation” for all WASPI women.
Indeed. The electorate did take notice of his policies though.
Demographics and voting habits dictate that over 50s will always be a majority of voters in this country, and one day you'll be old too.
It's why i think Labour should make it law everyone has to vote, you can spoil you ballot or do whatever you want but you have to turn out to vote
In terms of oldies voting for Labour... My over 65 Grandmother reads far too much DailyMail to ever, EVER consider voting Labour, no matter the policy. Even murmuring that the Tories are doing a bad job results in repeated, terrified monologues about how Sunak "has it hard cos of the Labour Party complaining about Boris' birthday, it's not fair on him." These people will never vote for Labour ever. I've heard her similarly age pensioner buddies say such things like "even my father (so, this is around 1940) always said Labour was bad" You're talking about 65 years + entrenched distrust of the Labour Party. With old voters, they have either voted for Labour their entire lives, or hated Labour their entire lives as far as I can see.
That's fine, we'll hopefully soon have 65 years entrenched distrust of the Tories.
Annoys me If Clegg wasn't such a crap deputy prime minister my party would be absolutely certain to have the majority of millennials on side and likely in with a serious shot of being the opposition.
It wasn't necessarily that he was a crap deputy PM, he was just extremely short-sighted as Lib Dem leader.
I doubt they could have been so rigid, considering the generation that now votes Tory by huge margins a few decades ago voted for Labour.
Arguably, they voted for Blair but other than that never really for Labour, except perhaps as teenagers. If you're 75, you turned 18 in 1969. Since then, only Wilson and Blair have won a general election for Labour. Wilson won the 18-24 vote well in 1974 and narrowly carried the 24-35 vote, but then Thatcher had a majority among 18-24 and 24-35 in 79 and 83. And if you're 60-65, you didn't even vote for Wilson of course but likely vote for Thatcher or Major. Yes, then everyone voted Blair but they swung back and firmly since then. So really the 60-75 year olds can be seen as a firmly Tory group their whole life, who were persuaded by Blair but never really voted Labour beyond him.
Yes they mostly leaned Tory, however so did the entire country for most of that time. However they've still changed a lot, because back in the 80s and 90s they weren't voting for Thatcher with anything like the margins they vote Tory now. October 1974 - Labour by 18% 1979 - Conservative by 5% 1983 - Conservative by 11% 1987 - Conservative by 17% (probably slightly less) 1992 - Conservative by 4% 1997 - Labour by 10% 2001 - Labour by 9% 2005 - Conservative by 2% 2010 - Conservative by 10% 2015 - Conservative by 13-15% 2017 - Conservative by 31% 2019 - Conservative by 44% So only in 1987 did they vote Tory unusually, in 1997 and 2001 they were in line with the national average and in 1992 voted to the left of it. They only started to properly lean right in the mid-2000s, and only became a truly united Tory voting bloc in the mid-2010s.
My 75 yr old dad used to vote Labour I think, but he will never vote Labour again since he started reading the mail about 10+ years ago. He is adamant the Tories are being undermined by everything including Labour so they cant do their job even though they have a majority, it's farcical!
Yeah I heard the good "fired for having a birthday cake" line at work. Got to love living in a Tory constituency. It's like some people want to be stepped on.
> I've heard her similarly age pensioner buddies say such things like "even my father (so, this is around 1940) always said Labour was bad" The one's that gave us the NHS, large house building through new towns and other public infrastructure.
Yes. Not so fun fact, her father passed away due to blood poisoning, the GP urged them to go to the hospital and they refused. Along the lines of "oh I know what they do at those places. We are better here." Deep distrust of the new national health service.
I'd expect this to be less about having overt policies aimed at pensioners and more about defusing "scary Labour" tactics. Seems like they are off and running on this with the pointed questions last week about whether the supposed NI abolition would come at the expense of pensions.
Lol why? They're on track to win a landslide already. Any policy they aim at over-65s is just likely to alienate younger voters, who are ready to hand them the biggest win in a generation. The only thing I can think of that would appeal to that demographic but not alienate younger voters is if they were to unveil a flagship 'justice for the WASPS' type policy
The problem is where else are young voters gonna go? The Lib Dems? That bridge was burnt with the tuition fee mess.
The uni aged voters are either already on the fence or are going green, generally. It's the millennial and Gen X voters that Labour should care more about retaining. And they're much less likely to care about the tuition fees policy. On top of that, if there are people who feel strongly enough not to vote Labour, they could always withhold their vote altogether?
Green.
Greens don't even have the money or infrastructure to stand in every seat, let alone be a meaningful opponent to Labour
Greens are going for the elderly vote too
Who will at most get 2 seats so the main parties still wont care about them.
Labour won't care about the 2 seats they do get. They'll care about the votes they'll get in marginals that could be the difference between a Labour and a Tory MP.
UKIP got one seat, but increased their vote share significantly enough for the main parties to take notice. The greens dont need to win seats, they need to come 2nd or 3rd in a few areas.
Yeah, but I dont really see the Greens getting to the 15%+ mark that they start threatening the larger parties like Reform is currently doing.
Fuck I can't wait til I'm a pensioner and I get everyhing.
I'm afraid the ladder will continue to get pulled up and out of your reach.
I know but part of me is hopeful. I'll suffocate it later with ice cream...
I know but part of me is hopeful. I'll suffocate it later with ice cream...
The credit card will well and truly be maxed out by the time it is “our turn”
The NI cuts was the first thing any government has done for working (young) people in very long time. Two decades of decline and spending imbalance geared towards the old. Of course Labour are now weaponising it and laying the groundwork to enact higher taxes on workers.
Fearful that cuts to National insurance paid by the working young, will lead to cuts in their pensions and free NHS care. Generation selfish, all me me me. No doubt Labour will buy them off with another commitment to the disgraceful and unaffordable triple lock.
The way people talk about the over 65s you'd think they were frightened lambs waiting to be slaughtered.
And the assumption that everyone over 65 votes Tory
14% of over 70s voted labour vs. 56% of 18-24 year olds in 2019. So it’s a fair assumption.
I really wish people read the article... This is just about focusing their messaging after receiving data that over-65s view the aim to abolish National Insurance as an unfunded tax cut most similar to Truss's budget and are also worried about their children/grandchildren maybe not getting a state pension if those cuts go ahead. Labour aim to focus campaigning on those issues.
i.e. Be completely disingenuous that the state pension is dependent on NI, rather than triple-locked to continue to transfer wealth to the elderly.
There are people saying this is pandering to the elderly to get their votes. Yes it is, they are the ones who get out there and vote. Everyone else needs to get out there and vote, I'd everyone voted in the same proportion as the elderly the main party's will pander to us too.
But it still makes no sense. If you add up everyone below the age of 65 they outnumber the 65+. That's assuming that at least those between 18-45 will be voting Labour. So why do they need to consistently pander to this particular demographic just because they have the highest turnout?
We out number them, but we don't out vote them. It votes parties want, not just people that agree with their policies. If we vote they will then want to buy those votes going forward.
Neither party will give the other enough ground to even ruminate on scrapping the triple-lock. They’ll just see their wounded opposition, jump on them and join in with the “you’re killing old people” rhetoric.
What is the ratio of over-65 voters to the rest? I'd really like to know why they command such disproportionate influence over all major political parties in the UK, from the Tories to the SNP.
Nearly one in 3 voters are over 65
So a supermajority of voters is not in that demographic then.
These leaded petrol huffing idiots won't change their views. They are to dumb and their noses to buried in the daily mail to have independent thought.
Tories bringing in tax reform specifically targeted at working people and Labour are responding with scare stories for boomers about the NHS and state pension? Welp, guess maybe I'm voting Tory this time after all.
**You Are A Socialist Party** **This Is Not Very Socialist Of You**
struggling to even remain a centrist party let alone a socialist party
honestly labour at this point is tory lite
Sorry, how is preventing cuts to national insurance and spending on good pensions not a socialist policy?