UK politics is in thrall to my postwar cohort. That’s to the country’s detriment, says Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee
No wonder, either, then, that Tories stoke culture wars designed to inflame their own older voters against lefter-leaning young people. The latter may never forgive older generations for the damage done to their future by the Brexit vote, a legacy that will last long after those voters are gone: onlyBut it’s time the woke woke up to the appalling age-gap in voter turnout, with the youngest groups 40% less likely to vote.
It’s no surprise that older people are about to be bribed again: while the government damns strikers for resisting a real pay cut of 7% after years of falling pay,with their triple lock reinstated, they alone keeping up with inflation. True, our state pension is low compared with similar countries and there’s a pressing case for hugely raising pension credit and making sure it gets to poorer pensioners.
There’s no need to pit one age-group against another. Families with children continue to be most harshly treated in benefits, and suffer further from the decade of brutal cuts to schools. The only reason is pork-barrel political opportunism from a government with its eye firmly fixed on the past, not the future.
The saddest fact revealed in the census is the lack of babies, as the number of 0- to four-year-olds falls again . Those not expectingcan’t afford more children. Birthrates are determined by economics: as the social geographer Prof Danny Dorling always predicted, austere times breed fewer babies, as happened dramatically in the 1930s. Birthrates will keep falling under any child-hostile government.
This week, Labour’s children and early years shadow minister, Helen Hayes, elicited government figures showing that there are
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