Nigel Gardner was the Conservative candidate in Harpenden and Berkhamsted at the general election.
When I lost in Harpenden and Berkhamsted (and Tring) on 4 July, I garnered 16,574 votes. Now, new research suggests over 2,800 of those who voted for me earlier this month will not vote Tory at the next general election.
Not because of any policy or scandal – but because they will be dead.
In a sobering statistic for Conservative survivors, some 17 per cent of those who voted Tory this time will have died by the time MPs face the electorate again, according to analysis from Focaldata. That is 1.2 million fewer Tory voters lost purely as a result of demography, one in six of the total Tory vote will no longer with us by 2029.
Meanwhile, Labour will gain around 300,000 votes as another cohort of young people turn 18. Ceteris paribus, that means the Conservative Party will lose another 34 seats at the next election, taking it down to well below a hundred MPs.
As a fifty-something, it never ceases to amaze me that a Conservative AGM or branch meeting is virtually the only place I now find myself where I still feel a spring chicken. Young members and activists – and by that I mean people under 40 – are an endangered species.
Some say this disdain and rejection for Conservatism is because under forties no longer believe the Conservatives are relevant to their lives. I disagree: I believe that it is primarily economic.
Research last year from the centre-right think tank Onward found that those aged 25 to 40 are predominantly “shy capitalists” who support lower taxes over redistributing wealth. From the hundreds that I spoke to, I believe economically they are at heart as Tory as their grandparents.
But they have been turned off the Conservative party by our obsessions with issues that are simply not very important to them.
To even get them to engage with us, let alone vote for us, we need to be bold about putting economic freedoms back at the heart of what we talk about and stand for. The freedom to build a business without European-style red tape; the freedom to keep as much of the money you earn as possible; the freedom to live in a state whose default position is to intervene only when necessary.
But in trying to appeal to these younger generations of voters, I fear the Party’s response may end up being one of simply mimicking the Government’s ill-thought-out plans, stealing Labour’s clothes rather than devising an economic approach that offers those earlier in their lives a Conservative vision of how those lives could be better.
Take building on the Green Belt – one of the issues at the heart of the election in Harpenden and Berkhamsted.
I worry as a Party we may end up going along with Labour’s ruse to reclassify big chunks of the green belt as ‘grey belt’ to get away with more building, in the belief this is only way to help young people onto the housing ladder.
Instead, we should be fighting to make the degraded green belt green once again, reclaiming our countryside for both the young and future generations yet to be born – and looking to solve the housing crisis through innovative changes to the tax system for downsizers to free up housing, as well as radical solutions to take on developers, work on density, and drive the use of brownfield lots.
And in case anyone thinks things can’t get much worse for Conservatives with this demographic timebomb, Onward’s research also revealed that those in their twenties and thirties had a much more favorable opinion of Rishi Sunak than the Conservative party itself. That’s worth remembering as we consider the choice of our new leader, the policies we would like them to develop, and the mindset we would like them to espouse.
Nigel Gardner was the Conservative candidate in Harpenden and Berkhamsted at the general election.
When I lost in Harpenden and Berkhamsted (and Tring) on 4 July, I garnered 16,574 votes. Now, new research suggests over 2,800 of those who voted for me earlier this month will not vote Tory at the next general election.
Not because of any policy or scandal – but because they will be dead.
In a sobering statistic for Conservative survivors, some 17 per cent of those who voted Tory this time will have died by the time MPs face the electorate again, according to analysis from Focaldata. That is 1.2 million fewer Tory voters lost purely as a result of demography, one in six of the total Tory vote will no longer with us by 2029.
Meanwhile, Labour will gain around 300,000 votes as another cohort of young people turn 18. Ceteris paribus, that means the Conservative Party will lose another 34 seats at the next election, taking it down to well below a hundred MPs.
As a fifty-something, it never ceases to amaze me that a Conservative AGM or branch meeting is virtually the only place I now find myself where I still feel a spring chicken. Young members and activists – and by that I mean people under 40 – are an endangered species.
Some say this disdain and rejection for Conservatism is because under forties no longer believe the Conservatives are relevant to their lives. I disagree: I believe that it is primarily economic.
Research last year from the centre-right think tank Onward found that those aged 25 to 40 are predominantly “shy capitalists” who support lower taxes over redistributing wealth. From the hundreds that I spoke to, I believe economically they are at heart as Tory as their grandparents.
But they have been turned off the Conservative party by our obsessions with issues that are simply not very important to them.
To even get them to engage with us, let alone vote for us, we need to be bold about putting economic freedoms back at the heart of what we talk about and stand for. The freedom to build a business without European-style red tape; the freedom to keep as much of the money you earn as possible; the freedom to live in a state whose default position is to intervene only when necessary.
But in trying to appeal to these younger generations of voters, I fear the Party’s response may end up being one of simply mimicking the Government’s ill-thought-out plans, stealing Labour’s clothes rather than devising an economic approach that offers those earlier in their lives a Conservative vision of how those lives could be better.
Take building on the Green Belt – one of the issues at the heart of the election in Harpenden and Berkhamsted.
I worry as a Party we may end up going along with Labour’s ruse to reclassify big chunks of the green belt as ‘grey belt’ to get away with more building, in the belief this is only way to help young people onto the housing ladder.
Instead, we should be fighting to make the degraded green belt green once again, reclaiming our countryside for both the young and future generations yet to be born – and looking to solve the housing crisis through innovative changes to the tax system for downsizers to free up housing, as well as radical solutions to take on developers, work on density, and drive the use of brownfield lots.
And in case anyone thinks things can’t get much worse for Conservatives with this demographic timebomb, Onward’s research also revealed that those in their twenties and thirties had a much more favorable opinion of Rishi Sunak than the Conservative party itself. That’s worth remembering as we consider the choice of our new leader, the policies we would like them to develop, and the mindset we would like them to espouse.