Is Britain broken (channel 5)

WWM
I am in rare agreement with Katie59 as far as the 'grey pound' is concerned. It isn't going to save the economy any more than the spending of the relatively wealthy is going to. There just aren't enough of either.

You are coming round to my viewpoint which is successive governments have been making the wrong decisions for at least the last 25 yrs. Spending too much on policies that have not produced a positive income, Deregulation, Brexit, HS2, Social improvement, Environment. While spending too little (almost nothing) on growth to pay for those policies, so borrowing/QE has had to fill the gap.

Because we have fallen so far behind it’s hard to see how a recovery is going to happen, my own opinion is higher taxation to pay for NHS, Education etc and modest borrowing for growth.

I'm not coming round to your view at all, Katie59. 😆

It was just a rare moment of agreement.

The Tories will always voncebtrate on the 'Grey pound' because that is where a huge swathe of their votes come from. They also know that older people are more reliable about voting in the first place.

Statistically, younger people are more Labour/LD etc.

Not always, but statistically.

It's ALL about the votes for political parties.

"Age is still the biggest dividing line in British politics
In fact, for every 10 years older a voter is, their chance of voting Tory increases by around nine points, and the chance of them voting Labour decreases by eight points.".

yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/26925-how-britain-voted-2019-general-election?redirect_from=%2Ftopics%2Fpolitics%2Farticles-reports%2F2019%2F12%2F17%2Fhow-britain-voted-2019-general-election#:~:text=Age%20is%20still%20the%20biggest%20dividing%20line%20in%20British%20politics&text=In%20fact%2C%20for%20every%2010,Labour%20decreases%20by%20eight%20points.

While Curtis's analysis of voters in the aftermath of the 2019 general election may have held that the old truism that voters become more conservative as they age is correct later data seems to show that it no longer holds.

Writing in the Financial Times in Dec. 2022 John Burns Murdoch says that data suggests that 'millennials' (the cohort born roughly between 1981 - 1996) are bucking the trend; more of them are sticking with their centre/centre left views.

Whereas,in the past some 15% have become more conservative as they age, data shows that currently only 5% do so.

Apparently this holds true for the US as well as the UK

This will cause problems for the tories as we 'boomers' die off and there are fewer right leaning voters coming along to replace us.

(I regret that the article is behind a paywall)

www.ft.com/content/c361e372-769e-45cd-a063-f5c0a7767cf4

It seems highly likely that the following generation, 'generation Z' will follow the same trend.

Just as the 'boomers' can't spend enough to get the UK out of an economic hole, they will also become less reliable tory voters...

Reading about people leaving dog poo bags around amazed me. There are very few bins to collect it here but people don’t leave it around. They just don’t, they take it home. As they should. I think a tv campaign might be needed to ‘educate’ people !

Interesting blog on the publication of the British Social Attitudes Survey (free to read)

While it doesn't deal explicitly with voting preferences it does show that social attitudes are leaning leftwards.

samf.substack.com/p/liz-truss-is-right-britain-has-become?r=72szy&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

natcen.ac.uk/publications/bsa-40-liberalisation-attitudes

After so many years of Tory mismanagement of the country it’s not surprising voters are looking elsewhere and want change. When it comes to the ballot box a lot will not commit to change in the numbers needed to give Starmer an outright majority. It’s rather like shoppers saying what they want, then seeing what they actually have in their shopping baskets, what they say and do are not always the same.
It would be nice to see LD make significant gains at national level, currently they seem to have a very low profile

DiamondLily

The Tories will always voncebtrate on the 'Grey pound' because that is where a huge swathe of their votes come from. They also know that older people are more reliable about voting in the first place.

Statistically, younger people are more Labour/LD etc.

Not always, but statistically.

It's ALL about the votes for political parties.

"Age is still the biggest dividing line in British politics
In fact, for every 10 years older a voter is, their chance of voting Tory increases by around nine points, and the chance of them voting Labour decreases by eight points.".

yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/26925-how-britain-voted-2019-general-election?redirect_from=%2Ftopics%2Fpolitics%2Farticles-reports%2F2019%2F12%2F17%2Fhow-britain-voted-2019-general-election#:~:text=Age%20is%20still%20the%20biggest%20dividing%20line%20in%20British%20politics&text=In%20fact%2C%20for%20every%2010,Labour%20decreases%20by%20eight%20points.

New word, voncebtrate . Younger people vote Conservative also. Unless of course they vote for turn about Starmer, if he does that before his party
may be elected,one year is a long time, how can they trust him enough to vote for said party