Aaron Bastani: The Tories have a problem. A recent report by centre-right think tank Onward found that just 21% of 25-40 year-olds would vote Conservative if an election were held tomorrow. This isn't something they look likely to grow out of, either. Millennials, in fact, "are the first generation not to become rightwing as they age," the report concluded.
This wasn't always the case. While the Conservatives topped Labour by nine points among 18 to 24-year-olds and 11 points among 25 to 34-year-olds in the 1983 election, by 2019, Jeremy Corbyn's party led among those cohorts by 43 and 24 points respectively.
Yet while the Tories are struggling to win millennial and gen Z voters, the right's conveyor belt of academics, journalists and influencers continues. These figures don't speak for their generation, of course – but in public life, they remain conspicuous.
Take Darren Grimes – often mocked by leftwingers, but certainly capable of garnering attention. Then there's Tom Harwood, who has transitioned from a gopher at Guido Fawkes to becoming a serious broadcast journalist, making an impressive appearance on BBC Question Time earlier this year. In fact, beyond Harwood, GB News is grooming a whole generation of rightwingers, like Emily Carver and Patrick Christys, for broadcast media dominance. For all the talk of a Conservative collapse among younger voters, the right is still producing its thought-leaders of tomorrow.
While the left obviously lacks the resources of the radical right (you can help change that by supporting Novara Media), a similar infrastructure has emerged over the last decade which means its ideas will only become more mainstream. But the development of these two polarised eco-spheres raises an important question: where's the equivalent for the centre? | |
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