The Generation Game. Politicians and parties struggle to adapt to a new schism in the electorate

Parliament has returned after a really surreal party conference season. The Labour Party in Brighton managed to hold a victory rally without a victory. The Conservatives in Manchester oversaw a wake without a death. UKIP convened what was the equivalent of a jumble sale in Torquay and selected their umpteenth leader with almost zero name recognition (Henry Bolton). The SNP show in Glasgow was a strange affair by all accounts as well. It is a highly atypical year in which one can conclude that the Liberal Democrat assembly was by far the most ‘normal’ of the gatherings but, in truth, their assembly in Bournemouth deserves that accolade. Otherwise, it was madness most of the way.
It will probably be much the same all the way between now and Christmas as the interrelated issues of the still unsettled Conservative Party leadership and the first stage of the Brexit negotiations work their way out. Pantomime is to come early in this regard, as it is in the mutual interest of Theresa May and her counterparts both to be dogmatic and to accuse the other of intransigence at the EU Council meeting that is occurring at the end of next week, and all before the real hard bargaining over the exact sum of money to be surrendered in return for a firm transition arrangement and a route to a final deal is hammered out. All of which will leave the business community, especially, bemused and despairing.
Those sentiments are entirely understandable but should not become suffocating. There is, in fact, an underlying reason why British politics seems all at sea at the moment. The surprise election and shock result has left politicians and parties of all stripes stunned by the new schism in the electorate that has emerged (or, perhaps more properly, been exposed) and all are struggling to adapt to it.
The death of class?
Exactly 50 years ago in 1967, Oxford Don Peter Pulzer could assert in his Political Representation and Elections in Britain that “Class is the basis of British politics: all else is embellishment and detail”. This was a shade sweeping but essentially accurate. Age had a modest impact too (older voters were a little more Conservative than class alone would imply) as did gender (women more Conservative than men), and educational attainment was an even more extreme indicator but basically a proxy for social class, with the complication that very few people went on to higher education.
Class, though, was the core of politics as witnessed by the election held the very year before Pulzer’s volume was published (1966) when more than 60% of all working class voters backed Harold Wilson and his Labour Party, while almost 70% of the (smaller) middle class endorsed Ted Heath and the Tories. As the detailed exit polling for the 2017 election set out below illustrates, we are in a different era.
Social Class |
Conservative |
Labour |
AB | 46% | 38% |
C1 | 41% | 43% |
C2 | 47% | 40% |
DE | 41% | 44% |
ABC1 ('Middle Class') | 44% | 40% |
C2DE ('Working Class') | 44% | 42% |
The numbers look even wilder if we take educational attainment as the voting variable instead.
Education Level |
Conservative |
Labour |
LOW (GCSE or less) | 55% | 33% |
MEDIUM (A-Level or equivalent) | 45% | 40% |
HIGH (Degree plus) | 32% | 49% |
The rise of age?
If the traditional divide in British politics and public life is no longer there. What has replaced it? Age.
Age |
Conservative |
Labour |
Turnout |
18-19 | 19% | 66% | 57% |
20-24 | 25% | 62% | 59% |
25-29 | 23% | 63% | 64% |
30-39 | 29% | 55% | 61% |
40-49 | 39% | 44% | 66% |
50-59 | 47% | 37% | 71% |
60-69 | 58% | 27% | 77% |
70+ | 69% | 19% | 84% |
Overall (GB) | 44% | 41% | 69% |
The trend set out above threatened to emerge in 2015 but did not because the relatively young did not turn out in the numbers that they had indicated (not least to opinion pollsters). Age was a powerful factor in the 2016 EU membership referendum where the Remain or Leave % of the vote by generation proved to be a strong indicator of the Conservative or Labour % in June 2017.
It is hard to overstate how seismic a shift this is in the political landscape or to overestimate the raw confusion that it has thrown into the system. If there was any coherent theme about the conference season (particularly for the Conservatives) it was that of intergenerational fairness and what to do about it. Housing, critically its supply and its price, is about to escalate in its importance. Managing Brexit so that it does not entrench this divide to their disadvantage is now fundamental to ministers. The uncomfortable reality for all concerned is that no one really knows whether this inversion of the roles of class and age is a temporary one brought on by Brexit or a more permanent shift in culture.
All change then?
Yes and no (inevitably). Yes, because these numbers are so striking. No, because the message might be more subtle than it first appears.
It can be argued that ‘class’ was never quite as simple a means of social stratification as academics such as Professor Pulzer contended. Class actually related to the interaction of relative income and individual identity. This explains why most citizens voted in the manner that class suggested they would but significant minorities in each case did not do so.
In the same spirit, one can postulate that age is also about more than a date on a birth certificate but the interrelationship once again between relative income (crudely put the young, not the classically poor, have been the biggest losers from the financial crisis and its aftermath) and individual identity (how much or not a person feels ‘European’ as well as ‘British’ or ‘English, Scottish or Welsh’. This is, however, a theory. Spare a little pity for politicians and parties who must work with the practice.
Tim Hames
Director General, BVCA