BRITAIN’S general election is just four weeks away, and the campaign is proving to be one of the least suspenseful in modern memory. With about a 20-percentage-point lead in the polls, the Conservative Party is all but guaranteed to maintain its majority; the only debate revolves around just how large it will be.

The Tories’ electoral fortunes have consistently depended on support from the old. In each of the past four general elections, the Conservatives have received a higher share of votes cast by people over 65 than they have from any other age group. This advantage is compounded by older voters’ propensity to show up to the polls: over-65s have also had the highest turnout rate of all age categories in every election in the current millennium. Even when Labour was cruising to easy victories, as the party did in 2001, older voters favoured the Conservatives by a slim margin. But in recent years Tory candidates have relied on the grey brigade more than ever before: whereas their margin relative to their Labour rivals among over-65s was merely 14 percentage points higher than it was with under-25s in 2010, that gap rose to a whopping 48 points in 2015.