Show caption Theresa May meets a helpline adviser at the Young Minds mental health charity during the election campaign in summer. Photograph: Carl Court/PA Conservatives Tories risk permanent loss of youth vote, says Willetts Ex-cabinet minister issues warning before conference as data shows lifestyles of those aged 25-34 falling behind older voters

Heather Stewart Political editor Fri 29 Sep 2017 12.30 EDT Share on Facebook

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The Conservative party risks permanently losing the support of younger voters unless Theresa May urgently tackles the challenges faced by the squeezed generation, the former Tory cabinet minister David Willetts has said.

Data analysed for the Resolution Foundation, a thinktank now chaired by Willetts, shows the lifestyles of 25- to 34-year-olds increasingly falling behind those of older voters, underpinning his intervention as the Conservatives gather for their annual conference.



“The worst-case scenario is, we lose the support of the younger generation, and don’t regain it,” he told the Guardian.

Young people have seen their living standards squeezed by a combination of weak wage growth and rapid rises in property prices over the past decade, and Willetts is concerned pension changes will make it harder for them to save for their retirement, too.



Jeremy Corbyn’s overwhelming support among younger voters in the general election contributed to the buoyant mood at Labour’s conference this week in Brighton, where he claimed his party was a “government-in-waiting”.

The Conservatives intend to make young people a theme of their conference in Manchester after the party suffered a string of defeats in seats with large student populations, such as Canterbury. Concern about tuition fees is adding to the party’s difficulties with the youth vote.

Resolution’s findings, based on analysis of detailed consumption data by Loughborough University, shows 25- to 34-year-olds are spending 15% less than 55- to 64-year-olds, once housing costs are taken out. As recently as 2001, discretionary spending among the two groups was the same.

Willetts, who has long warned about the risk of a generation being left behind, said June’s election result provided clear evidence that what his 2010 book dubbed “the pinch”, was now hitting the Tories at the ballot box.



“There is a real issue here. It’s great it’s finally come into the political debate because it’s really important: younger people are having a tough time,” he said.

YouGov identified 47 as the crossover age at which voters were more likely to back the Conservatives in June’s election, underlining the concerns of the party’s backbenchers, who felt they had little riposte on the doorstep to some of Labour’s attack lines, including on school funding cuts and university tuition fees.

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“If you were being very cynical, you could say a party that doesn’t have the support of 25-year-olds, and does have the support of 50-year-olds, that formula is fine provided people go through the life cycle, and they get to own their own home, and they have their kids and settle down, and they then turn to voting Tory,” Willetts said.

“What you can’t have, 10 years later, is a party that is then only appealing to 60-year-olds, and has lost the 35-year-olds as well. The danger is that we are getting more and more disconnected.”

He argued that, rather than accept the Corbynite agenda of sweeping renationalisation and radically higher public spending, the Conservatives needed to get better at meeting voters’ aspirations.

“There’s a paradox here, especially for my party, because the aspirations of these people – they don’t want a Marxist revolution; they’re not voting for a massive transformation of British society – what they’re wanting, actually, I would argue, is classic Tory aspirations. It’s a property-owning democracy.”

The research for Resolution, by Donald Hirsch at Loughborough, also busts the myth that while younger people’s incomes may have risen little in real terms, they are better off thanks to the mass availability of hi-tech gadgets, international travel and other social changes.

The research finds that the biggest increases in spending since 2001 on eating out and foreign travel have been among the 55-64 age group. The thinktank tries to illustrate the distinction by talking about spending on pre-theatre steak frites by older voters, as opposed to the consumption of avocado on toast by younger voters. And while the younger cohort spend marginally more on mobile phones, the differences are small.

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Willetts said: “It is sometimes said that the great technological improvements of recent decades mean that young people enjoy a far higher living standard than previous generations. Our new research shatters this idea. Not only are young people earning less, they’re also spending less too, especially as housing takes up ever more of their outgoings.

“My generation has enjoyed riding the crest of a huge consumer boom over the last 50 years. In the 1980s, when we were in our youth, we had more spending power than any other age group. Fast forward 30 years and we’re still the biggest spenders.”

Theresa May has acknowledged the problem, telling the former party leader Michael Howard in an interview with parliament’s House magazine on Thursday: “I think there is a generation out there who feel that they’re going to be worse off than their parents. And what we want as Conservatives is that people should be able to see a brighter future for their children.”

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Downing Street has been scrambling to draw up policies that might appeal to the under-40s, and which May and other cabinet ministers could highlight at the party conference. Some government insiders complain, however, that the chief whip, Gavin Williamson, is cautious about measures that could alienate the party’s older base, such as mass housebuilding.

George Freeman, the chair of the party’s policy forum, who convened the recent Big Tent ideas festival aimed at considering how to broaden the party’s appeal, has said the housing crisis is at the crux of the Conservatives’ problem with younger voters, asking: “Why would you support capitalism if you have no prospect of owning any capital?”

Willetts said the challenge is so serious that his party must set aside its traditional scepticism of state intervention.

“On housing, the starting point is increasingly obvious – we’ve got to build more houses, and we’ve got to use all the resources of the state to get them built. In other words, we have to recognise the power of the state,” he said.

May used her speech at last year’s conference to signal a more interventionist approach, telling her party that “it’s time to remember the good that government can do”. However, she has since shown little enthusiasm for intervening in markets, and watered down a manifesto pledge to cap energy prices, and scrapped plans to put workers on boards.