Voting, age and representation – what can numbers and polls tell us?

Below, a collection of tables and links I have captured, prompted by a BBC News report on 10 August 2018 which told me what I know, but presented the information in such a stark way that I felt unable to ignore what I saw and that I need to try and do something about it. More than what I occasionally do anyway — which is to stand at the west entrance to the main campus of Nottingham University handing out Labour Party leaflets encouraging students to register as voters.

I will come back to this in a bit, but here are the tables I mention above, taken from the BBC News report:

Click on the tables/graphs to enlarge

What struck me was the shared symmetry in each graph. It made me wonder how common this symmetry might be across a range of political questions and data. For my part, as a 74 year old, I am with the 18–24s in every graph: I would vote remain if there was a 2nd referendum; I would stay in the single market and I support the free movement of people and I have come to the conclusion that there has to be some kind of vote on the outcome of the Brexit negotiations and I would choose a 2nd referendum if that was the only option.

Despite understanding why young people make assumptions about oldies, such as myself, it doesn't stop me feeling annoyed at the fact that many of their assumptions are wrong and often ignore their own shortcomings as a group.

If more young people took an interest in politics and voted then I would be much happier. The chances are that the quality of life for everyone in the UK would be much better than it is. My wife, Susan, and I, like countless other over 65s have always voted and continue to do so. It prompted the question in my mind 'When did the number of young people voting drop?' and what I found can be seen in the table below (remember, click on the image to enlarge):

1970 was the first general election in which 18 year olds could vote in and maybe contributed to the spike in 18–24 year old voting that occurred that year. In 1966 young voters were on a par with over 65 voters. What jumps out are the general elections from 1997 to 2017. I wonder what part young people staying in education longer played in the downturn?

Once upon a time most young people would have left full-time education at 15 (16 if they had attended a grammar school or a college of some sort). Most of us though left school at 15 and found ourselves in a world of work, surrounded by men and women of all ages, many of them having lived, worked or fought through two world wars. You sat in canteens or or rest rooms during breaks listening to the gossip, the banter, the football (cricket during the summer) and talk about politics. The national newspapers people read told you their politics before they uttered a word, and there were a lot more newspapers then.

Our MPs were different too, a lot less precious and, I suspect, better known, mainly because nearly every household at the beginning of the 1960s read a local newspaper of some kind. In Wembley, we had two weekly papers and our two MPs featured in every issue. We had three London evening newspapers to choose from: The Standard, The Star and Evening News. Pop, my grandfather read the Wembley News, the Evening News and The People on Sunday. For my part I had a newspaper round from when I was 7 until I was 14, so I got to see who read what and looked at them all. The point of this ramble is to remind myself and you, my reader, that we got our news and politics different before TV took off. TV news was in its infancy and BBC radio's news was mainly national and stilted at best.

Thinking all this led me to think about where our MPs have come from, class and occupation wise. Again the tables and graphs show us in stark terms how the world of politics has changed over the last 50 years.  Here is a graph and a table from the House of Commons Library website:

The table below is from the same report and relates just to Labour MPs (this is not made clear in the table's heading).

Here is the report's cover:

The graphs and table tell you a great deal about why Labour's fortunes have changed over the years and it has alienated many voters of my generation. In a nutshell, as the occupations those who become Labour MPs has changed, so has the attitude of the Party to its core voters has changed.

The word which I have used for many years now to describe the attitude of all too many Labour Party activists, Labour councils and governments councillors and MPs is 'disdain'. Gordon Brown caught the moment forever when he was caught on film describing a 65 year old working class woman, who challenged him over the economy and immigration, as 'bigoted' (See Guardian link here). 

As a party, Labour does little to engage with the wider community, except in its own interests. I know this first hand from decades of being a community activist, often fighting a local Labour Establishment.

The occupations of Labour councillors, I am sure, have also changed in a way which mirrors the demise of working class MPs among Labour MPs.

The evidence for my argument is there to be seen above table and graphs. 

Of course how political parties communicate with the the public at large has changed with the coming of the digital 24/7 media. There is also, in my view, a growing disconnection between the world we live in and the ones many choose to immerse themselves in. It is a form of escapism; a way of making the present bearable.

As to how we deal with these challenges I have to admit I have no answer. My 19 year old grandson is a Labour Party member and student activist in Wales. We agree on most things political, but we see different things, hear different things. For example I have no experience of anti-semitism in the Party, whereas he has and it, rightly, disturbs him.

Like me, he is no fan of Momentum or Labour First. Few voters share the certainties of either. In the end I believe Labour has to be the Party of consensus not dogmatism; of empowerment not control; of localism not centralism,  because it is in the former that we find the global, shared, experience and, yes, internationalism which should underpin any claim to be a socialist.

Finally, last Sunday's 'Reunion' programme on BBC Radio 4 brought together the founders of the Social Democratic Party for an all too short 45 minute discussion. Of those who made the Limehouse Declaration in 1981 only Roy Jenkins has passed on. David Owen, Bill Rodgers and Shirley Williams all took part, as did a few other founding members. It made fascinating listening. David Owen impressed me. Did the SDP have an effect on the Labour Party? The answer has to be 'yes'. Anyone active during the Militant madness of the 1980s knows that we should be grateful for that.

Right now the Labour Party seems destined to repeat history, much as I hate saying it.

A FOOTNOTE: This morning (Thursday 16 August 2018) I opened an email from Anna Soubry, which contained a thoughtful piece headed 'Political We can't go on like this' in which I found echoes of this post. At one point she says, not for the first time, 'It is surely only a question of time before the more moderate Labour MPs, members and supporters face the reality and leave to form a new movement'.

I have emailed her office suggesting that she listens to last Sunday's 'Reunion' programme of Radio 4. At the time their actions were seen even by many ordinary members of the Labour Party and critics of Militant as self-serving, and destined to split the left coalition (for that is what Labour is and always has been) to the advantage of the right and the ever opportunistic Liberals. And so it did for a while.

I suspect many Labour MPs understand this and are sitting on their hands waiting...