This is the FT Long Read this morning.
I can save you the time reading it. The answer is, yes.
But there was one chart in the report worth sharing, and it was this:
I hate to say it, but it is the elderly dragging this country down. You know the sort. You probably meet them, as I do. It comes with having white hair.
These are the types who genuinely believe they fought on the beaches, saw the Spitfires in dogfights overhead, and the world was all in good order when they were young because the police clipped misbehaving youngsters around the ear, and the world was then put to rights.
Thatcher's legacy is dire - because these are Thatcher's real offspring. They're deluded, selfish, hate the young (except their grandchildren, of course, who are "ever so clever" because they've gone to university, but whose friends are otherwise loathsome) and utterly detached from reality in a great many cases. The sooner they pass the baton, the better, and they can take their Parties with them when they go. The young are showing us the way - and are being denied the chance by the elderly.
In the context of another post this morning, how do we get that message across?
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Am I off track in having the impression that the major press outlets/corporations, the BBC and ITV appear to be controlled by people “who genuinely believe they fought on the beaches, saw the Spitfires in dogfights overhead, and the world was all in good order when they were young because the police clipped misbehaving youngsters around the ear, and the world was then put to rights. Thatcher’s legacy is dire – because these are Thatcher’s real offspring. They’re deluded, selfish, hate the young … and utterly detached from reality in a great many cases”?
How much coverage have these entities given to Zack Polanski’s speech to the Green Party Conference?
I found a recording on Facebook.
You may be right
It was live on Sky and BBC24. I expect there are people in news organisations who want to deprive them of publicity but equally, there will be others who want to subvert them. Remember when the BBC tried to silence Gary Linaker. An American friend who followed the story was ‘amazed at the solidarity’. One day we will know the whole story.
But the ‘old’ are not the corrupt owners of the billionaire press – the barons who are pumping out the hatred. They want ‘the little people’ to be divided – and the ‘old/young. is a handy division , now that the economy has tanked enough to prevent young people being able to afford to buy or rent a house. David Davies has been lovingly nurturing this trope for several years.
There are indeed many old people who think along the lines of your ‘spitfires’ caricature Richard but I’m not sure it helps to just want them to die off as quickly a possible . Many of them were the life and soul of the swinging sixties, and may have been punk rockers, and will no doubt be replaced by the next generation who have become more reactionary as they age.
We must get a grip on the corporate media platforms feeding on and promulgating hate through their algorithms and on the tax evading media barons, and make the BBC a fully independent public service broadcaster.
.
@Andrew Broadbent : “Many of them were the life and soul of the swinging sixties, and may have been punk rockers ”
I was too young to swing in the sixties, but certainly was part of the punk scene – and it was always a minority.
The reactionary oldies of today were , I suspect, in most cases the reactionary young of the 1970s – those who supported the National Front and who viewed punk bashing as a pleasant way to spend an evening. Especially true in the kind of small town I grew up in, and fuelled in part by The Sun and other usual suspects.
The truth is that the Thatcher privatisation/deregulation/housing/oil jamboree was a sale of the family silver, a single-generation bonanza that our children and grandchildren are already paying for – and they’ll pay more and more as climate-ecological breakdown – another effect of poorly regulated capitalism – undermines their remaining security.
But standing in the way of this truth is what Sartre called ‘bad faith’ – the self-justificatory building of identity through attributing our successes to our own talents and skills, but our failures to other people or adverse circumstances. Many wealthy, or comfortable, people have always thought that way – Sartre linked bad faith with bourgeoisisme – but Thatcherism turned this into a generational divide in the UK, which is particularly hard to challenge. I see it as up to, precisely, their children and grandchildren – those that the older, privileged generation care about and may listen to, more in family and social situations than the public sphere. I see our main role as helping equip the many more progressive young people with evidence and arguments they may need.
“These are the types who genuinely believe they fought on the beaches, saw the Spitfires in dogfights overhead, and the world was all in good order when they were young because the police clipped misbehaving youngsters around the ear, and the world was then put to rights.” This is an excellent quote, thanks.
‘Genuinely believe’ is the key word, as statistics showed that in 2016 the very oldest cohorts of voters – the ones who actually experienced the war (some even fighting in it) – voted to remain in the EU referendum. It is the so called ‘boomers’ – people born after the war (1945-65) – that were the cohort that voted leave in such large numbers that swing the result – aided by mass readership of the right wing press.
As the historian David Edgerton says – Britain is a country revolving around the grey vote and the media revolves around the grey vote, but there is another country, and it is the one that doesn’t share the shibboleths of the old, and one that – through younger ages moving through – is only going to get more of a voice with time.
Thank you
And agreed
It isn’t a good quote. Do you actually know anyone who fought in the war who is still alive to vote?
Some old people. Not you. Not me (I’m 86) The group is really anyone who says “you’ll never change my mind about X” and they can be any age.
A lot here are exceptions to this observation. We are.
I hate to hear it that the elderly are dragging the country down (since I’m one of them), but objectively it’s true. Mercifully I don’t fall into your categorisation of having white hair, but that’s only because there’s not much left 🙁
On the other hand I did pick my father up when he talked about the government spending taxpayers money – and gave him “The Deficit Myth”, which he has now read and understood. So perhaps even us elderly can be educated if only we’re not continually deluged in incorrect information, misinformation and downright propaganda.
I don’t wish to “pass the batten on” prematurely. I think the elderly have much to offer and are often prevented by pervasive ageism. In my line of work (the tech sector) it is very difficult to work flexibility. I’d love to do so but can’t. Many productive elderly are actively prevented from contributing when they’d like to do so. At the same time we’re facing a fertility crisis.
Clearly the older people are, the more right leaning they are and the more, in my view, mistaken they are in their economic and political understanding. Perhaps that’s because they voted Tory years ago when the Tories were not an extreme right wing party and, like the slowly boiled frog myth, they don’t realise the Tories are now proto fascist.
But rather than giving up on them we should, I think, be trying to educate them with a positive message. Older people have younger members of their families who they wish to support (look at the effort some people go to to provide private education and pass money on to their grandchildren). I think elderly are just as able to a appreciate a positive message and the truth about economics. But the Single Transferrable Party hasn’t given them that chance. They merely criticise the opposition and then pledge to do precisely the same thing – no positive message.
Meanwhile the Tory party will probably die, and I shan’t shed a tear.
In the context of Deform it would seem that the on-going “legitimisation” of Fart-Rage and Tice is on track.
https://beeley.substack.com/p/uk-column-news-the-zionist-take-over
@ 8min 20sec – Fart-Rage and Tice have been meeting with BoE officials.
Question to the BoE: apart from the monthly “catch-up” with Goldman Sachs (hat-tip Col Smithers) how many times have BoE officials met with:
a) Lib-Dems (order of magnitude more HoC seats than Deform)
b) Greens (+/- the same number)
c) SNP (as per Lib-=Dems +/-)
d) Who made the decision to meet with a party that is a limited libaility company (I am a director of a UK Ltd – will the BoE meet with me? – I’m politically active)
e) What was the rationale for the meeting ? (light entertainment from a cogenital liar?)
f) what was said at the meeting?
I bet no minute is published.
Repetition springs to mind as the way forward to get the message across, as per your other post.
Good stuff Richard et al.
Ian Duncan Smith identified the death of the Conservative Party 2 decades ago. And articles written then were saying that the Party has been in trouble since 1992. The success of the most successful party has always been due to its willingness to Jettison ideology at every moment to keep power. That is not true anymore and hasn’t been for a long time. It is ideologically captured by a particular age cohort and this cohort actively advances its own power and interest rather than the interest of the party. Their party is not for continuation.
I think this refusal to innovate – but to actually look backwards, is precisely what their problem is.
But it is also the problem of the whole single transferable party.
Hmmm……………
Consider that England’s present has been as Will Hutton observed in the 1990’s well and truly ‘hollowed out’. All we have left really is our history and that includes our economic history – pits turned into visitors’ centres, mills turned into shopping malls, railway lines providing and leading to jobs turned in cycle tracks for tourists.
Much of England is one big ‘history channel’ – finding value only in the past, but happy to see anything of value now whisked away for the benefit of the few – and we are living in it.
Even I fall victim to it. Living in London in the mid to late 1990’s, I came across a parade unveiling a statue to Bomber Harris. I joined the crowd out of curiosity and then there was this noise. I looked up to see a Lancaster bomber accompanied by Spitfire and Hurricane flying low over us. To this day I know not why, but I just started to cry as I watched what really was just death from above fly over us in the sunlight. It was not out of sorrow; it was out of some sort of proud affinity. I lost a person who would have been an uncle in that war. Yes – that is what it was. It just caught me like that and I am no little Englander – I know what has been done in my country’s name, my working class background has ensured that.
Maybe it is because I have gown up having this episode of my country rammed down my throat continuously?
What I’m saying is that history sells even in politics. Don’t under estimate how the past can be used and recycled and promised again. Is that after all, part of what Farage is actually doing? Trump in the USA and MAGA?
History sells folks – especially when the future is being fought over.
”Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future.”
— George Orwell
Much to agree with
PSR, depends who is telling the history.
Last week a man drew some art on Scarborough beach. It was 1984 with Starmer being depicted as the number 8.
You’ll probably be able to find it online. The man who drew it was saying it was to protest against ID cards.
Would you believe the police turned up to see if he was breaking the law. I’ve been told about it twice on Facebook, but they can’t show it any more!!
I used to be very vocal (and derogatory) about the UK’s “gerontocracy” and I still hold the view that the odds of finding someone with toxic political views (i.e. more focused on making the lives of others miserable than their own better, or more focused on their own excessive material wealth than the good of the country) are much better amongst older cohorts.
However, there are big drawbacks to this way of viewing the world. It can alienate the young from older people who could be persuaded; it can unfairly paint all elderly as a problem and it also distorts the picture of what is really going on. It is particularly important to remember that not all far right voters are older homeowners with comfy lives. The very poor of that generation and others are also very active.
The biggest problem was I naively believed the hateful politics would become if not extinct then marginalised with the demise of the “Boomers.” Unfortunately, young men and boys are increasingly being attracted to these toxic politics too, with Andrew Tate an obvious gateway and Farage is very active on TikTok too. Don’t underestimate how much this is cutting through.
Noted and agreed
Thanks AW1983. I am of the postwar generation, and I agree, division (saying my cohort are the problem) is dangerous, and you are right, there are a lot of angry young men, rightly angry, but some of them looking in dangerous places for remedies. And even if we thought dangerous politics would die when I do, that’s too late.
And, RJM, plenty of people have grandchildren who are struggling and who have not gone to university. Getting the message across? I liked your other post. Getting people on board may mean asking questions, including ‘do you really think that?’ and ‘what will that do for …. ?’. I get angry too, but ‘hurry up and die’ isn’t going to win anyone over. Save that for the kitchen table.
Except, we have to identify where the problems are, and right now they are many amongst the elderly and their prejudices. Let’s not pretend otherwise.
In my “youth” it was people like Bertrand Russell, Bruce Kent. Noam Chomsky and Tony Benn who kept me sane and hopefully of a brighter future, now, fortunately we have Richard Murphy, Zac Polanski to carry the torch of progress and survival.
This does not surprise me at all. It also means that Reform may also be similarly time-limited. I hope so.
How to fight back?
It falls on all of us in that age group (I am 68) to challenge these people and also to support the young in seizing the agenda and taking over the political system from them. You are right in your description of these people. If the young criticise them they get put down with patronising insults bordering on derision. They do not like it, however, when one of their own age group criticises them. I remind myself (and them) of the words of another (wiser and more experienced) old man:
1. “Do not look the other way; do not hesitate. Recognise that the world is hungry for action, not words. Act with courage and vision.”
2. “Massive poverty and obscene inequality are such terrible scourges of our times — times in which the world boasts breathtaking advances in science, technology, industry and wealth accumulation — that they have to rank alongside slavery and apartheid as social evils.”
3. “As long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality exist in our world, none of us can truly rest.”
4. “In this new century, millions of people in the world’s poorest countries remain imprisoned, enslaved and in chains. They are trapped in the prison of poverty. It is time to set them free.”
5. “Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the action of human beings.”
6. “Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life.
7. “While poverty persists, there is no true freedom.”
8. “Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great. You can be that great generation.”
These words were spoken, 20 years ago, on 3 February 2005, in Trafalgar Square. The old man? Nelson Mandela.
We must speak up for the young and the future of humanity. It falls upon our generation to fight those reactionaries within our age group.
This is the source fur the speech http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4232603.stm
Brilliant.
Thank you.
My experience of local politicians who manage my public sector output is that the Tories where I work do have young people active in their ranks. They are mostly I would say are anti-left reactionaries who see themselves as a bulwark against some threat from the soviet era, never mind WWII (one young councillor called Manchester a ‘Socialist republic’ the other day in Council chamber). It is quite bizarre – but then again, Starmer’s anti-Left Labour party is as we know quite bizarre too.
The local Reform party where I work is doing well – with ex-Tories and Labour defectors in it. No Lib Dems from what I can see.
The Tories have always been a party in denial of their fascist tendencies in my opinion although I prefer the old patrician Tory party to Thatcher’s version, because the old patricians did feel a duty to look after the ‘estate’ – in other words they did feel that they had a responsibility to others. The ‘one nation Tories’ had this feudal bond with those they stood over based on morality or – being cynical – a religion induced guilt or belief that the inequality they presided over was God approved. It was taking and giving – a little – but still giving.
Thatcher’s Tories turned that sort of responsibility into a curse and shrugged it off like Ayn Rand suggested and the march to the enablement of individualism pillaging the realm of the collective accelerated in earnest, leaving those they stole off to simply rot. It was all just about taking now.
A word of warning: I think that the Tories will endure. They will become the intellectual arm of Reform who do not know how to run a piss up at a brewery. For the Tories have principles – and if Nigel does not like them, they have a load of other principles Nigel might like.
Anyway, some good news – Mike Parr – are you reading?
I saw Zack Polansky on C4 news last night. I could not believe what I heard him say, so I watched it again just to be sure. And then a third time (only kidding!).
You know what? If he keeps that up I just might vote again – the first time since 1997.
When confronted with an unwillingness to change, my father would always say “while there is death there is hope”. In his 90s he voted remain (and abhorred the “poppy fascism” season that is about to come upon us).
Sadly, I am not sure that is true anymore. As you say, the death of his generation that actually served in the military during WW2 has given way to the generation that you describe. Worse, as many BTL comments suggest, the generations that follow are being drawn towards selfishness and fascism.
I like his comment.
And yours.
This new generation have not known war, nor the collective thinking and sacrifice it requires.
Yet they have been surrounded by it.
I always think of Dennis Healey who was a beach master for the allies Italian Campaign and how that bloodiest of battles impacted on him, and how different classes of people thrown together got on with it to help each other survive.
He led a tank platoon up through Italy. It must have been horrific.
I think that the Tories certainly look like they’re finished, but I reckon that this is a short term view. Reform will win the next general election but will quickly implode (Farage clearly doesn’t like criticism or scrutiny; he’ll get plenty as PM). The Tories will then regroup. People who are right leaning won’t vote for any left of centre party, including Starmer’s LINO.
I am older than the median age of a Tory voter (but have never voted Tory and certainly wouldn’t ever consider Reform) and I have 2 (relatively compared to my age) children wh are “awfully clever” and have graduated from uni.
You asked “how can we get the message across?”. I for one find your blog to be hugely helpful to portray how we could govern and manage the economy better. There’s enough detail for the curious and those who wish to delve deeper and it has enough of a soundbite quality that it is easily digestible and not overwhelming (for those who are more social media focused). I am full-time employed (and very short of free time) so your ideas and research are hugely valuable and the way you marshal your thoughts is very compelling. I hope you don’t mind but I use the foregoing – alongside my own professional expertise / experience – to try to engage my own family, friends and colleagues in thinking about political choices and outcomes and even what our purpose as an organisation should be. I also use it to convey these ideas to the politicians, government bodies, etc., that I deal with. In summary, I think we can all collectively begin to spread and, therefore, reinforce a cogent, consistent and rational approach (or message) that breaks with neoliberal dogma. I think it would be even more effective when it is broken down to elements such as poverty, wealth tax, education, etc. For example, I recently was dealing with a politician who was arguing that there is no austerity because they have increased spending…I obviously disagreed with a similar argument to George Monbiot’s Guardian article today. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/04/crashed-bike-pothole-cost-cycling?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other. I truly believe we need to start and create a consistent, rational counter-narrative to address the political class’ fixation on the short-term and addressing the many bonfires (e.g., Reform-fuelled racism) instead of the core issues. Maybe even raise some petitions to the UK Government?
I am going to continue to try in my own small way to portray the common sense and common good approach you espouse and I’m sure your readers (like me) believe. Thank you for arming me with the arguments and the rationale.
Thanks
I will come back with more on this.
My students (16-19 ) and lower down the school think Farage is the mist prominent politician in the UK (TikTok saturation paid for by ???) and about 25%+ are potential Reform voters. The Tate influence has handled from its peak 2/3 years ago. Polanski is the only online opposition currently.
Noted
“You know the sort. You probably meet them, as I do.”
Yes I do. The rose-tinted spectacles brigade. I’m old enough to remember the 1970s and 80s, and like now, it was pretty sh-t, and not much better since. Even the supposedly better years that followed were only good if you could jump on the bandwagon of self-interest and greed. Thatcher, doing everything to set us on the road to where we are today. A permanent state of insecurity, crisis, and austerity.
The Tories may be dead and buried, but today Badenough announced she would take us out of the ECHR. Some might say, it doesn’t matter, they have no chance of winning. True, but it does move them in line with Reform policy, and the possibility that in a hung parliament, Reform, and the rump Tories get together to finish off what Thatcher started. Then, the Tories get assimilated by Reform.
We all know what FPTP might deliver next time.
But aren’t Reform – owned by ex-Tory politicians and bankrollers, and voted for by ex-Tory voters – nothing more than Tory Extreme – with the original Tories in the centre, and Starmer’s Tory Lite on the other side (I’d hesitate to say on the left) ?
On the question of reactionary oldies, there are plenty of grey heads at every pro-Palestine march or anti-fascist protest, and at events like the Durham Miners Gala (where this year I saw an old guy who must have been at least 80 wearing a t-shirt with an observation about Farage so rude that I cant repeat it here) .
The Tories look like they are finished.
Labour look like they are finished (at least Starmer is)
The mainstream media continues to support Reform
The chart suggests that the Greens are non-starters.
Will the new Corbyn-Sultana Party make an impression?
But they didn’t fight the war and neither did most experience the war. My parents born in 1939 and 1940 are long dead, and whilst they could tell stories of rationing etc, it was their parents who fought in the war not them. Anyone old enough to fight in the war would now be at least 95!
The generation you are referring to are actually the generation that never had it so good. They benefited from the rise of the welfare state, the NHS, social housing, final salary pension schemes and if clever enough, free university education. No generation since has had what they have, but somehow they believe they have had it hard and that current young people are light weights lacking resilience.
It’s time we stop pandering to this idea of the poor pensioner, whilst some struggle, many do not, but far more young adults and families are really struggling.
If the Tory party dies, I will cry no tears, and despite technically being a boomer, will continue to vote Green.
I agree Richard. Unfortunately, too many younger people don’t vote while oldies faithfully vote at every election.
That is a problem. I agree. I also do not reach younger people – as the age profile of those viewing my channels proves.