“Class is the bedrock of British politics. everything else is embellishment and detail.” So he wrote Peter Pulzerthe former Gladstone Professor of Politics at Oxford University in the 1960s. Nowadays, however, the biggest demographic divide in British electoral politics is age, not social class.
According to British Election Studyin the 2019 general election, the Conservatives won the support of 56% of people aged 55 and over, but only 24% of under-35s. In contrast, Labor was supported by 54% of under-35s who voted, but just 22% of those aged 55 and over.
In contrast, support for Britain’s two main parties among those in working-class occupations was little different from that among those in professional and managerial positions.
But what underpins this age gap? We usually think of Labor as a party that is more ‘left’, more concerned than the Conservatives about inequality and more supportive of ‘big government’. So does young people’s greater willingness to support Labor mean they are more left-wing than their older counterparts?
Are they more concerned about inequality and more inclined to believe that the government should act to reduce it? And are they more inclined than older voters to want the government to spend and tax more?
These questions are addressed in a final chapter British Social Attitudes Reportpublished by National Center for Social Research. Based on 40 years of data collected by the BSA’s annual survey since it began in 1983, the chapter finds that while younger people have become more concerned about inequality in recent years, this has not been accompanied by greater enthusiasm for more tax and spending.
Since 1986, nearly every BSA survey has routinely presented respondents with a series of questions designed to measure how “left” or “right” they are on the issue of inequality. People, for example, are asked whether they agree or disagree that “there is one law for the rich and one for the poor” and “the government should redistribute income from the more affluent to the less affluent.”
Their responses to these and similar statements can be summed up on a scale measure ranging from 0 to 100, where 0 means someone is very left-wing and 100 indicates they are very right-wing.
Young people move left
When the scale was first administered in 1986, there was no difference between the mean scores of those under 35 and those 55 and over. Both had scores of 37.
Similarly, 30 years later, in 2016, the average score of 38 among the youngest was little different from that of 37 among the elderly. The increase in support for Labor among younger people that was already evident by then was not supported by a more left-wing view.
However, in the last three or four years a gap has emerged. In the BSA’s latest survey, conducted towards the end of 2022, young people scored 28 – ten points below the corresponding figure in 2016. By contrast, at 36, the outlook of older people has hardly changed.
However, this does not mean that younger people want more tax and spending. Every year since 1983, the BSA has asked people what the government should do if it had to choose between increased taxation and spending on “health, education and social benefits”, reduced taxation and spending or keeping things as they are.
In the 1980s, younger people were typically more likely than older people to say that taxation and spending should increase. In 1984, for example, 42% of those under 35 expressed this view, compared to just 33% of those over 55.
But since the mid-90s, the opposite has been happening. By 2015, 41% of younger people wanted more tax and spending compared to 49% of older people.
Meanwhile, the gap has since widened further. While support for tax and spending increases has risen to 67% among older adults – the highest it has been in 40 years – among younger people it is still just under 43%.
Lost faith
So why might young people be more concerned about inequality but at the same time less supportive of more spending? The answer may well lie in the distinctive financial position in which individuals of today’s younger generation find themselves.
Britain’s aging population means that a greater proportion of government spending goes to health and social care which primarily benefits older people. Meanwhile, while older people receive relatively generous pensions protected by the triple lock, younger people who have gone to university actually pay a higher level of “income tax” to pay off student loans.
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Meanwhile, although the pandemic posed a greater threat to the health of the elderly, younger people were more likely to find their educational and financial lives disrupted and to endure the lockdown in lower-quality accommodation. At the same time, home ownership has become more difficult, mainly because many spend a significant portion of their income on rent.
So there is good reason why younger people are more concerned about inequality, but at the same time seem to doubt that increasing tax and spending would help them.
The challenge for the parties in the upcoming elections may well be to convince these voters that the next government will offer them a better future, rather than add to their woes. But to do that, they may need to be willing to think outside of the traditional mindsets associated with the terms “left” and “right.”