Britain is run for the benefit of the elderly at the expense of the young

On paper, at least, British politics is getting younger. Winston Churchill may have entered No 10 on the cusp of retirement age, but David Cameron and Tony Blair were a mere 43 when they became prime minister. The current Chancellor is only 41 with several other Cabinet colleagues in their late 40s. But just because politicians may be younger than they once were, it doesn’t follow that the focus of public policy is.

The proposed hike in National Insurance contributions to pay for social care – a tax increase which would fall on the shoulders of working people while funding care for the elderly who are exempt from NICs – is the latest in a seemingly endless trickle of policies which, if not designed to give the young a deliberate kicking, at least don’t seem to care whether they get caught in the crossfire. Indeed, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that the UK is increasingly a gerontocracy, run largely in the interests of the old.

You might have imagined that the Government would have thought twice about increasing taxes on younger people after the experience of the past two years. After all, while they were largely unaffected by the health consequences of Covid, the young have borne the brunt of the social and economic impact of lockdown.

The number of 18-24-year-olds claiming unemployment-related benefits remains 75 per cent above March 2020 levels. Hospitality and retail, some of the hardest hit sectors, are where many young people start their working lives. Two years of disrupted schooling have left children playing catch up and this month freshers will be starting university paying thousands for online learning, having not sat a single A-level exam.

Most have done this without making a fuss, keen to protect granny and do their bit, yet the campaign against them has been relentless. Let’s not forget when Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said the sight of young people socialising on a gorgeous August weekend last summer made her “want to cry”. This year and last, the young were castigated for meeting in parks, for wanting to date, for daring to travel abroad. Vaccine passports, meanwhile, will disproportionately target activities and venues where young people gather.

It forms part of a long-term pattern. The failure of successive governments to tackle the housing crisis has served older generations at the expense of the young. Part of the social care issue is tied to the refusal of the British public to contemplate selling their homes to help cover care costs. But is it really right that so many homeowners deny their children and grandchildren the opportunity to buy a home by objecting to any housing development that dares enter their postcode? And why have successive governments shied away from planning reform at the first sight of rebellion among their older voters?

The pensions triple lock is another case in point. If unamended this year, pensioners would have been in line for an increase in the state pension of above 8 per cent because distortions caused by the furlough scheme and the loss of lower paid jobs mean average wages are bouncing back from a sharp hit last year. And yet perfectly sensible proposals to limit this year’s increase to a less extreme figure have been met with fury, despite the fact that working taxpayers would have to pay for it.
Politicians might contend that, of course they focus on the interests of older voters, because older people actually vote.

But there are enormous risks, to the Conservatives in particular, in appearing to neglect the interests of the young. It is popularly believed that Left-wing young people shift Right as they grow older, yet recent research from the Institute of Economic Affairs found that this is no longer happening as it once did. The combined weight of these fogey-friendly policies, plus an increasing proclivity for Left-wing ideas among the under 40s, spells trouble not just for the Tory party electorally, but for the market economy and for society itself. Britain needs to take care its politics doesn’t continue to age, even as its politicians stay forever young.

Emma Revell is head of public affairs at the IEA