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**Hugh** · 12-08-2023, 17:42

Interesting article in the current Spectator (Tories house magazine)

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/...-evisceration/

Quote:

The Tories are heading for electoral evisceration

The party now seems too impotent to address the failures that have led it here. It continues to be unable to achieve even the things it desires, opting for government by announcement rather than action. It would rather discuss the trivia which enrages its base than the pressing issues facing the country. The party would rather whinge about the things it sees holding it back – from civil servants to Just Stop Oil – than utilise anything in its power to address it.

More than that, the party has become disconnected from the future of the country it wishes to govern. The Conservatives have shrunk to an unprecedented position in the age split of their voters. Only in the over 65s do they have a plurality of support. The entire working-age electorate intends to reject them at the next election.

The figures are stark. Only around 6 per cent of under-24s intend to vote Tory, far lower than ever before. For the cohort above that, those 25-49, a group that includes working parents and those in settled careers and homes, it is less than 15 per cent. Even among those approaching retirement, the Conservatives can’t count on more than a third supporting them.

None of this should be surprising. The party offers these voters almost nothing. Neither its retail policies nor its rhetoric in any way appeals to these demographics. For the younger groups in particular, the party ignores or worsens their problems and tells them it hates them, then wonders why the feeling is mutual.

Quote:

It will be hard to win back the voters who feel let down by the Tories. The last decade or so of government has involved juggling and then disappointing a large electoral coalition. Now that coalition is coming together against them to produce a catastrophic defeat. Unless they do something to reverse this the party looks to be out of power for many years – it is simply impossible to win with deep unpopularity across all but one demographic.

It also becomes self-reinforcing. If the under-60s aren’t voting for you, they also aren’t becoming party members, officials, or candidates. Already most of the Tory selection meetings look like they are in the local nursing home. Active members are always a minority of the party, but the fewer votes it gets the more marginal, and frankly weird, that group becomes. This hampered the Tories on the return from 1997, but even then a quarter of young people were voting Tory.

Now, there is a real risk the party will age out, unable to replenish itself. With the party languishing among young people, the sorts you might expect to be the members, MPs and ministers of the 2040s probably don’t even vote Tory today.