How are your plans for the evening of Wednesday 1st November? Do you happen to live within striking distance of Cheltenham? If so ...
'The Conservative Party’s Crisis of Political Reproduction' a talk by Phil Burton-Cartledge
Are the difficulties facing the Tories simply a matter of exhaustion, of the public getting fed up with them as they did in 1997 and 1964-66? Without peering beneath the surface, that appears to be the case. The antics of Johnson, Truss, and the do-nothing politics of Sunak are enough to give the most loyal Conservative voter pause. But, as my book – The Party’s Over: The Rise and Fall of the Conservatives from Thatcher to Sunak – argues, the Tories have a far more serious problem: a crisis of political reproduction. The mass base the Tories have built is overly dependent on older people generally and retirees in particular, and is a coalition premised on high property values, home ownership, rising pensions, and (to an extent) shielding the elderly while attacking the living standards of working age people and gutting the state of its capacity to do anything. Voting Conservative is not a consequence of getting old, but of the tendency of acquiring property throughout one’s life – however meagre that might be. If a Tory government is a block on this process of acquisition, it’s not going to generate future Conservative voters. And that makes the job of winning elections progressively more difficult. Unfortunately for the Conservatives, their policy preferences and rhetoric, especially their emphasis on “anti-woke” politics is wedded to cohering this coalition, which rules out the possibility of their reaching out to younger layers. In short, it is very difficult to see how the party can forge a new coalition of voters that can win them the next two general elections.
My talk kicks off at 7pm at the University of Gloucestershire's Francis Close Hall on Swindon Road, Cheltenham. The details are here and it's free to attend!
1 comment:
«Voting Conservative is not a consequence of getting old, but of the tendency of acquiring property throughout one’s life – however meagre that might be.»
That is a good way to put it in short.
«If a Tory government is a block on this process of acquisition, it’s not going to generate future Conservative voters.»
But there is inheritance: heir who get a property is one obvious thing, and heirs who get a share of a property is another, because a property inherited by multiple heirs gets sold, and each heir then can use their cash share as a deposit on a property, often a BTL.
«And that makes the job of winning elections progressively more difficult. Unfortunately for the Conservatives, their policy preferences and rhetoric, especially their emphasis on “anti-woke” politics is wedded to cohering this coalition, which rules out the possibility of their reaching out to younger layers.»
Here I am a bit skeptical that matters: if the young people don't have material interests as incumbent they would be silly to vote Conservative (or New, New Labour and LibDem, the other parties that represent incumbents), and if they do I reckon they will woke thatcherite regardless of woke.
"Paris is well worth a mass", a large majority of Conservative "Remainers" still voted in 2017 and 2019 for hard-brexit Conservatives.
Property profits are *huge*, and "woke" is just a "nice to have", and in the secret of the ballot box many young people with a material interest in property, directly or as heirs, will make a non-"woke" choice.
Still I reckon that in the long-term our blogger argument is good: as the number of first-time buyers shrinks, so will the thatcherite voter block, but slowly.
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