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Telegraph
15-05-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Our changing demographics will transform politics, perhaps disastrously for the Right
This week, the Telegraph will be publishing a series of essays from experts on the demographic crisis facing much of the world, with falling birth rates and ageing populations seen across many regions. A list of published articles can be found below this one There is a long tradition of forecasting Britain's political future through the crystal ball of demographic change. In the 1960s the then doyenne of British psephology, the late Sir David Butler, argued that demographic change favoured Labour. The party was popular among younger generations of voters who had come of age since Labour had established itself in the post-war era as the principal challenger to the Conservatives. It did less well among older voters, whose loyalties had been formed when elections were still a battle between the Conservatives and the Liberal party. However, these older voters were gradually leaving the electorate for a better place. Alas, for Labour, along came the winter of discontent and Margaret Thatcher, and by the 1990s the future looked Conservative. Labour's roots were in the working class, while the Conservative party was more popular among middle class voters. Unfortunately for Labour, Britain's occupational structure was becoming increasingly middle class as blue-collar manufacturing jobs were replaced by the white-collar occupations of the knowledge economy. Part of the reason why, after losing four elections to the Conservatives, Tony Blair's 'New Labour' party focused on 'middle England' was to boost its popularity among middle class voters. These days, the job people do is no longer reflected in whether people vote Conservative or Labour – partly because of the changes made to Labour under Tony Blair, and partly because the Conservatives' pursuit of Brexit, not least under Boris Johnson, enabled the party to reach parts of the working class that had hitherto been beyond its reach. Forecasting the political future through the crystal ball of demographics is then a dangerous game. Skilled politicians are not the prisoners of demography. Rather, they make their own fortune by adapting their party's appeal to a changing British society. However, skilled politicians still need to understand how changing demographic patterns might influence the opportunities and challenges their party is likely to face in future. And there is little doubt that demographic changes that are already happening in Britain present the right with potentially significant challenges, both electorally and for its vision of the role government plays in our lives. These days, voting choice in Britain is shaped above all by age. Younger people are more likely to vote for Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens or one of the nationalist parties. Older people are more likely to support the Conservatives or Reform. According to YouGov, for example, in last year's general election only 19% of 18-24 year olds supported either the Conservatives or Reform, compared with 58% of those aged 65 and over. Of course, the significance of this pattern depends in part on why it has arisen. Perhaps it is simply the case that people become more inclined to back parties of the right as they get older. If so, many of today's twenty somethings who vote Labour might be Conservative supporters by the time they become fifty somethings. But perhaps the divide is a generational one. Maybe today's younger generations have distinctive aspirations and values that are unlikely to change as they get older. In that case, the right in Britain could – unless it adapts – potentially be facing an existential crisis. Previous academic research by Prof. James Tilley of Oxford University has suggested that some people do swing towards the Conservatives as they enter the comfort of middle age. Meanwhile, some of the current support for parties of the left might reflect the discontent of a post-financial crash generation that is struggling to get on the housing ladder, let alone looking forward to being better off than their parents. If that economic discontent eventually abates, perhaps their political views will change too. Yet there is also good reason to believe that much of the difference is generational. Brexit brought into our electoral politics a division that is variously labelled as 'culture wars', 'woke' issues, or the 'equalities and diversity' agenda. Examples include arguments about immigration, the treatment of Britain's ethnic minorities, and whether and how we should celebrate Britain's imperial past. Leavers and Remainers typically have divergent views on these issues. Unlike Leavers, Remainers are less concerned about immigration, more supportive of equalities initiatives for black and Asian people, and less inclined to celebrate Britain's past uncritically. Crucially, not only is this Remainer perspective more popular among younger people (who mostly voted against Brexit), but in many instances it looks as though each new generation of young adults has been more supportive of the pro-equalities agenda than was the generation before it. In tying themselves to a pro-Brexit, anti-woke agenda both the Conservatives and Reform are – in the long term - seemingly at risk of being cast away by a gradually ebbing tide. Of course, at present, being more popular among older people is advantageous. The ageing of Britain's demographic profile means it is already the case that approaching one in five of us is aged 65 or over, a figure that is set to rise further. But this ageing process also poses a challenge to any politician of the right who would like to reverse the significant expansion of the role of the state that occurred during the last parliament . Ageing populations are potentially expensive. They demand more in the way of health care and pensions, both paid for by the state. Governments can hope that we not only live longer but also more healthily, but the health of today's older people often reflects habits and lifestyles that were adopted half a lifetime ago. They can also try to persuade us to work for longer and in so doing raise the age at which the state pension is paid. Yet this is far from a poplar policy (especially among the older voters on which the right currently relies) and, so far, the state pension age for men has only been increased from 65 to 66, with a rise to 68 still projected to be 20 years down the track. Alternatively, we can bring – and indeed have brought - more women of working age into the labour market. But working women have fewer babies, thereby contributing to demographic ageing, while in the meantime governments have increasingly been taking on financial responsibility for the provision of childcare. Or we can – as we have also done – increase the working age population by admitting more migrants many of whom, not least, provide the social care that our ageing population increasingly needs. However, that approach is also unpalatable to voters on the right. Currently, the right is consumed by a seemingly existential fight between Reform and the Conservatives. But however that battle turns out, the victor will need to develop a strategy that enables the right to tackle a demographic tide that threatens both to undermine its electoral prospects and its hopes for smaller government. Whoever emerges as the victor in the current battle will need to be a highly skilled politician. Other articles in our series on demography:
Telegraph
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Runaway immigration, crumbling NHS, economic disaster: there's just one underlying cause
This week, the Telegraph will be publishing a series of essays from experts on the demographic crisis facing much of the world, with falling birth rates and ageing populations seen across many regions. A list of published articles can be found below this one You hardly need look far these days to see articles in the press or postings on social media or hear opinion formers in broadcasts and podcasts expressing despair over the state of the nation. Discussions of the causes of our current national malaise are varied and often tangled, but I believe they have at root a single factor. As Bill Clinton might have said: it's the demography, stupid. For more than half a century, the UK has had below-replacement fertility, meaning that the average couple has had fewer than around 2.1 children. This is hardly particular to the UK. There is not a country across Europe where there have been enough births in the past decades. And the problem goes well beyond Europe. Many know that Japanese and Chinese women have barely more than one child each, but how many know that women in Jamaica and Thailand are having fewer children than in Britain or that, if it were a state, Puerto Rica would have a lower fertility rate than any US state? This is a truly global issue but it cannot be solved globally. Each country will have to sort it out for itself. So for now, let's focus on the UK. If I had ten minutes with Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, I would try to persuade them that the root of our ills is demographic. The reason they are struggling with tight labour markets, endless demand for immigration and a populist backlash, sluggish growth, lack of innovation, spiralling government spending, withering tax receipts and mounting deficits, with the fear of the bond markets calling a halt at any moment, making the country like an impecunious Victorian family ever awaiting the arrival of the bailiffs – all of this can be traced to our birth problem. Let me give you just a few examples to illustrate this. One: In the middle of the last century, there were five-and-a-half people of working age – say twenty to sixty-five – to every one older than that in the UK. When I was born in 1964, there were more than four and a half. Today, there are barely three. By the middle of this century there will be two. Think what that means for the balance of the economy, for the availability of workers versus the need for care, for the relationship between the payers of tax and receivers of benefits. Two: There is a very sharp peak of entrepreneurship around the age of thirty and a very sharp peak of innovation around the age of forty. It is clear that societies with burgeoning numbers of such age groups have a real and significant advantage when it comes to exactly what is required for an economy to grow. So some kind of sweet spot might come when the median age in a society is around thirty-five, which is where it was in the UK pretty consistently from 1950 to the mid-1990s, since when it has been rising. By the end of this century, it will be nearer to fifty. And over the same period, the share of thirty-somethings in the population will have fallen from almost 15 per cent to barely 10 per cent. Three: The average person aged over eighty-five requires around seven times the amount of healthcare spend compared to someone in their twenties, thirties or forties. This may not be so alarming until you realise just how dramatically the number of people aged of eighty-five had ballooned seven-fold since 1950, and more than five-fold as a share of the population. Their share will grow a further three-to-four fold by the end of the century. When you understand on the one hand the vastly greater spend the old require and the vastly greater share of the population they are becoming, you will understand why the NHS seems like a black hole, taking ever more of the national spend and seeming to provide an ever-diminishing service. Four: Mass immigration and ethnic change are being driven by a labour shortage due to our longstanding low birth rate. A spad to a senior minister told me: 'You won't believe the daily pressure we are under from business to allow in immigrants for labour'. And every business person or state employee I meet tells me how hard it is to get workers, this despite our sluggish economy. When I joined the workforce in the 1980s and the last baby boomers were entering the workforce, we had far more new entries to the labour market than retirees leaving it. No longer. So we have demographically-driven labour shortage being met by immigration. Bear in mind that nothing correlates with a vote for Trump or Brexit or I suspect Reform – or the AfD or the National Rally – as strongly as a concern about immigration. You simply cannot understand the dramatic and ubiquitous rise of national populism across Europe and the US without understanding the rise of immigration and rapid ethnic change. And you cannot understand the immigration and rapid ethnic change without understanding demography. California went from being over 75 per cent non-Hispanic white in 1970 to under 40 per cent in 2012. London was 87 per cent White British in 1971: by 2021, it was 36 per cent. You may think these numbers are something to celebrate, or you may think that it is impolite even to talk about them. But they do have a political impact, and if you want to understand the politics of the US or Britain or anywhere else in the developed world which has experienced recent high levels of immigration, you cannot ignore them. So if you are Keir Starmer or Rachel Reeves – or indeed Kemi Badenoch – trying to figure out why the economy is not growing or why the public debt is ballooning or why however much money you throw at the national health service, the service experienced by individuals keeps deteriorating – or why your polling in the last local elections was so dire and Reform seems to be streets ahead in the polls and we may be looking at a Reform government and a potential parliamentary wipe out for both of the main parties – take a close and careful look at the demography which underlies all this. As to what we can do about it – that is another subject. And one it is high time politicians engaged with.
