A deal with the DUP

Jun 26, 2017 11:28:10 GMT Someone in a tree said:

I fear for the future of our liberal right and then what about the Good Friday Agreement ?

Why? Is it only Protestants who want £400m for infrastructure, £150m for improved broadband and £350m on health and education?

I'm sure Catholics wont be turning down quicker porn downloading or a better health centre because the DUP got the money by kissing Tory arse.

Jun 27, 2017 10:26:43 GMT Jan said:

Jun 27, 2017 8:34:53 GMT @cardinalpirelli said:

The thing I hadn't reckoned with in this election was how previous non voters might affect things. We've always heard about how non voters skew massively to the left and are mostly younger (pensioners always vote in great numbers) but, it was presumed, that they won't ever vote. Now that some have scented the power that they could have, especially as payback for those older voters who for so long have had things their way, I think it's made the generational switch of power much, much closer. 

The narrative that young voters were responsible for Labour doing not as badly as expected is less secure when you discount the fake 72% turnout figure for them - the correct figures (18-19 57% and 20-24 59% from Survation) were as usual the worst turnout figures of any age group compared with the overall turnout of 68%. The young have always disproportionately voted left-wing compared to the old but this hasn't translated itself into a Labour majority - as people get older they switch allegiance. It is like the Orange Tree Theatre, the audience average age is 60 and has been for the last 30 years. The Corbyn surge, such as it was, seems to have been due to the switching of some of the younger middle-class vote to him and the return of working-class UKIP voters in the North to Labour - Corbyn will have a hard job keeping both of those groups happy. 

Yet even with that small increase in turnout the difference was there, more to the point that the age group above (up to 34) did not skew more conservative this time and, in fact, was nearly as strong for labour.

There are good reasons why that will continue and they are housing and job security (and both are linked). Any politician needs to have those words permanently on their mind if they are to win the next few elections. No longer is the lure of property owning and job security there for younger generations, even as they get older. Those things that usually tempt them to vote conservative have been taken away by the buy to letters and the zero hours contractors (among others, but those most visibly); this is why I think it is foolish to think there is a way back to a conservative government soon.

As for the older UKIP/labour voter, May or whoever is taking the hit so that labour do not need to, leading to the decline in immigration which they think will help (it won't, it will further stiff sections of the economy and NHS). For those voters that job is presumed done and now they can focus on jobs, salaries, property etc. instead. For the younger middle class they just want a home at a reasonable price and a job that they can keep. There are too many conservatives who won't relax the purse strings to invest in those, with comments even now about 'living within our means'. Well, what that adds up is such a dire situation for those who did vote labour this time and they aren't going to suddenly vote for more austerity.

Would a conservative government instigate a massive house building programme (with a marked social housing element)? Would they make buy to let much harder or even near impossible? Would they invest in public sector jobs to offset any EU losses and more? Would they run deficits to help those in their twenties/thirties to buy the property that is built? It's possible but I can't see any of them in Westminster who have even begin to engage with this, the biggest problem of our age.

Jun 28, 2017 11:15:46 GMT @theatremonkey said:

Jun 27, 2017 12:59:36 GMT @cardinalpirelli said:

Would a conservative government instigate a massive house building programme

On that one, I feel that a balance needs to be found on pensions. If those, and other investments, were allowed to give the kind of return they did before they were "tax raided," then second homes as an investment would become less important, freeing housing stock. Already, house prices are slightly lower thanks to changes making buying a second home less attractive. More of that, and I wonder if house building itself will become as required. Fill the empty "investment" stuff we have first...

That's true and I'd be interested to know the figures of how much 'investment' housing we have.

The pensions grab was, indeed, a complete disaster and one of the reasons for which Brown and the last labour government were rightly booted out but the sheer number of pensioners relative to the population paying for them is also a massive and continuing issue (and one, for which immigrant workers would help, if only the current retired generation (and others, but they particularly) weren't so anti immigrant. A pretty sick irony there).

The current generation of retired took the benefits, helped by successive governments who shifted the pain onto those of working age. I doubt they deliberately knew they were stiffing the young until the last decade or so but I have seen little evidence since that they actually do care.

So, inevitably, those who have benefitted and the governments that have sucked up to them, are not looked on with much favour. Voting patterns look to be shifting accordingly. With the last gasp of the baby boomers holding onto power likely to fade over the next five years or so, the tectonic plates are shifting.