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Can anyone save the Tory party? Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images
After they limped through four failed leaders in quick succession, only to be wiped out in the general election result, it is hard to believe a new leader will solve the Tory existential crisis. For one thing, whoever finds themselves leading the party will still be confronted the same electoral arithmetic.
To stand any chance of survival, they will need to win over three groups of voters. In the South, they lost a whole swathe of seats to the Liberal Democrats. In the Midlands and North, huge numbers defected to Labour and there is stiff competition from Reform which lies second in nearly a hundred seats. And the third group, first-time voters, were never particularly interested in the first place; but if they don’t appeal to the young, demography will doom them. So any new leader must come up with an agenda sufficiently innovative to appeal to young voters, while also attracting back the two groups of defectors.
They’re not going to do this by promising tax cuts, which was the party’s message this summer. Those who defected to the Lib Dems were mostly on decent, middle-class incomes and were morally disgusted by the presumption that appealing to their greed would keep them onboard. They jumped. Conversely, the promise of tax cuts merely confirmed among Red Wall voters tempted by Labour, that although the Tories had talked about restoring jobs, skills and pride to their towns, they had been duped: what the Tories cared about all along, was the rich. As for first-time voters, when Corbyn offered to skin the rich, they attempted to sweep him into power. Few first-time voters pay much tax.
What, then, if not tax cuts? Certainly, the new leader shouldn’t ape Farage and talk about reducing immigration. Voters are unlikely to have forgotten that the party promised this as the main motif of “getting Brexit done”, whereupon immigration sky-rocketed. Hence, there would be what we might politely call a credibility problem. Equally, those defectors to the Lib Dems who were repelled by the base morality of tax cuts are overwhelmingly likely to react similarly to a message that scapegoats immigrants for Britain’s fiscal straight-jacket and associated difficulties. Besides, the killer reason not to copy Farage is because to do so would play directly into his agenda of absorbing the Tory party into his movement. He could not have expressed this any more clearly than he already has: “Kill the Tories.”
Of course, the contenders could do what Labour did in opposition: say as little as possible and watch while the Government stumbles from one fiasco to another. Labour has not had the greatest start to its time in office, and so watching and sniping will indeed be tempting. But it should be resisted. For one thing, all the other opposition parties will be playing that game, and each has a different but highly focused audience more receptive to a fine-tuned message. Youth irritated by some new government decision will be drawn to the Greens who will have pounced on it. Scottish Labour voters angered by factory closures, will be inclined to drift back to the newly led SNP. Those Labour voters whose identity is bound up in the traditional priorities of care and compassion, already irritated by the cancelation of the winter fuel allowance, will be hoovered up by the Lib Dems positioning themselves as Labour’s conscience. Those Labour voters in Red Wall constituencies, already despondent that Keir Starmer has only noticed them in respect of their proclivity to riot, will be prime targets for Reform. In any case, hugely tempting as it is to join the chorus of derision at ministerial acceptance of smart clothing from Labour donors, this risks reviving memories of lavish wallpaper, duck ponds and Covid parties. Better not.
Fortunately, there is an obvious, tried and tested agenda which, astonishingly, the new Government has yet to embrace. Britain is being torn apart by regional inequalities far wider than anywhere else in Europe. We are no longer One Nation, as Wales, Northern Ireland, most of provincial England, and much of Scotland have diverged further and further from London and a few proximate gilded cities. We know it is an attractive policy since it is what Johnson was elected to do alongside Brexit: “levelling up”. The trouble is, he did nothing about it until 2022, when he delegated it to Michael Gove. Aided by Andy Haldane, Gove devised a detailed strategy which sat unimplemented because it was blocked by the Treasury. Like Andy Street, Gove bore the cost of Treasury dogmatism, but loyally refrained from resigning in frustration. Obviously, the new leader will need to apologise for some failure of the past government, but none of the candidates is personally tainted by this one.
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SubscribeSo the renewed Conservative Party should not want tax cuts or restraints on immigration but should intervene in the regions, and ….
This article is nonsense. Absolute rubbish. If that’s what the voters want they are doomed, but offer them shrinking government, rewards for harder work, and economic growth. They might just vote for it; as they always have.
Incidentally “Every cohort since the Fifties has been worse-off, age-for-age, than its predecessor” is an absurd assertation and entirely untrue.
I am only sad that my subscription helped pay for this meaningless left wing twaddle.
The writer has got it into his head that what he is proposing – levelling up – is the be all and end all solution to the Conservative’s woes. But it isn’t.
Mass migration and failed multiculturalism are at the top of the agenda, along with the hugely negative impact on public services and housing – and the Conservatives sre still too afraid to address this, whereas the Reform Party are not. Levelling up is important, but lower down the agenda.
Immigration is the issue. We voted to reduce it in 2016 with Brexit and the Tories then increased it. Each Tory manifesto has promised some sort of control and reduction, and failed to deliver it. Collier says they have a credibility problem, and the do! How they solve that, I don’t know, but until they credibly show how they will stop mass cheap labour immigration, they won’t win again. They have to stop talking tough and acting weak, and start talking nice and lovely and friendly and shut the d*mn door.
“The Farage solution to the woes of broken towns and cities is the wrong-headed scapegoating of immigrants.”
Paul Collier is as much out of touch with ‘ordinary’ folks as are the pathetic Tory leadership contenders and 2-Tier/3-Gear Keir and his Labour madhouse.
Farage is, by contrast, very much in touch with ordinary folks and has the courage to articulate the concerns and aspirations of these people. What us ‘Little People’ (thanks, “Call-Me-Dave” Cameron!) want quite simply is a strong leader who will build a political machine of similarly strong-minded people who will: get rid of the ECHR, and revise UK human rights law so that it supports the majority rather than facilitating minority interests at our expense; challenge and overturn the mad excesses and injustices of the Woke Era (e.g. women can have penises), especially the naked indoctrination of schoolchildren from entry to A-level; significantly decrease legal immigration and deport illegal entrants from UK; decrease the number of students being shoe-horned into the university system (and invest in proper apprenticeship programmes and workforce training instead). Such ordinary folk also wish to see an end of the moneyed, arrogant Establishment elite feathering their own nests around the glittering London economy and aspire for the creation of a separate England parliament as the final piece in completing the devolution jig-saw. That’s when investment in wider England will spread from ‘Londonistan’.
Woking Class individuals like Paul Collier have no feel for the depth of discontent, unhappiness and seething resentment that lie below the surface of the English regions, with almost zero free speech space for ‘ordinary’ people now to express their true feelings and views. The massive increase in the UK population, caused by immigration and immigrant birth rates, has swamped public services that have not been increased to keep pace with the incoming migrant population, placing native English/British people at increasing disadvantage. The political elite continues to wreak havoc on our native culture and sense of identify and keeps us under increasing control through expanding authoritarian policies, which the Covid lockdown emboldened them to pursue.
Most of your compatriots outside of the London sphere are seriously pissed off, feel downtrodden and are disillusioned, Mr Collier!
“Currently, their future is so bleak that few immigrants other than a handful living on welfare are attracted there”
Really? Last visit to where I grew up (a northern region severely affected by the loss of industry, which has seen a catastrophic drop in population as anyone with a brain clears off PDQ) and there seemed to be a remarkable number of young males all riding round on electric bikes and women in burkas with push chairs. People I know in nearby towns report large numbers of ‘asylum seekers ‘wandering around all day. Doubt any are, or ever will be, net contributors, even the ones who got here legally. This whole article is a great, steaming pile of New Labour apologist rubbish.
If there were a referendum in any Western European country about immigration, I expect that the majority would vote to reduce it, or abolish altogether. It would be a certain vote catcher in UK – why leave it to Farage and Reform?
It’s hard to know where to start with an article with so many plausible but false generalisations. The whole thing is like a house built on sand.
Britain is the most divided and unequal country in Europe – not true.
Prospects for British teenagers are worse than anywhere else in Europe – not true. Has this man checked the youth unemployment figures in southern Europe ? Or noticed why so many young Europeans are still working in the UK ?
Every [age] cohort in the UK since the 1950s has done worse than its predecssor – again untrue.
Reform is only about scapegoating immigrants – the biggest lie of all. Another clown who imagines – or pretends – that everyone who votes for a party must believe or want the same thing or have similar beliefs and motivations.
Even if we could ignore all that, the idea that Conservative defectors to Reform are ready to return is frankly puerile. You don’t get to betray your natural supporters and them expect them to come straight back. Not even if you apologised (and meant it). Which isn’t going to happen. An Oxford academic might be able to rationalise this possibility as plausible. But that’s not how real people behave.
I am clearly fed up with aricles like these. Another Blairite rant by an Credentialed Moron lecturing citizens on why they should trust the experts and stop believing their lying eyes..
That’s not what we pay Unherd subscriptions for, the Grawdian is free.
Britain can no longer afford compassion on the former scale. That is one of the reasons for the anger about illegal aliens storming its shores and settling in for a lifetime of dependence on the taxpayer, not to mention the continuing deforming of the traditional English culture — or what’s left of it.
Adult social care costs have exploded. They have blown a hole in nearly every local authority budget. And why? Not an aging population. Immigration creating even more workless households.
Real GDP per capita, living standards, is shrinking despite robust economic growth. And why? Immigration is adding dependents – workless households – faster than immigration is growing the economy.
Transport and water infrastructure is being used far beyond design capacity. Any why? Immigration is fuelling the fastest population growth in 75 years without the requisite fastest economic growth in 75 years to pay for more infrastructure.
The pension system is accruing liabilities faster than the economy is growing. And why? Immigrants will need pensions too and the type of immigration we are attracting is low wage, low skill and net dependency.
The author seems utterly ignorant of the economics of immigration and the denominator effect. Even the ONS and OBR have cottoned on to the economically negative outcomes the current wave of immigration is creating.
What the author does inadvertently reveal is young immigrants won’t want to pay our existing pension liabilities. Without realising it, the author destroys his own argument that immigration will fix our demographic problem. Instead it will only escalate generational tensions alongside all the other social tensions it is escalating.
So, who is Paul Collier? He offers us no demonstration of his expertise and isn’t a household name. Collier is of the dismal science and takes his money from an endowment given to Oxford by a Ukrainian oligarch buying his way into respectable circles. He’s moonlighted as a flunky for one Tony Blair (who gave Paul his CBE), and done stints in all of the international organisations that have so disastrously guided Western policy since the mid-90s. This isn’t the biography of a conservative, let alone a man who has his finger on the pulse of ordinary citizens fed up with liberal technocrats breaking everything they touch and lecturing everyone on “solutions” to problems their ideology has helped create.
I agree. His inane generalisation of voting groups and his stick-your-finger-in-your-ears dismissal of immigration make his proscriptions dodgy, as do his antecedents (I too found myself googling the Blavatnik school at Oxford).
Well, who could have guessed that from the tone of the essay? But thank you Nell for that research.
I agree – it’s a very meh! article.
Indeed. As soon as I read “To stand any chance of survival, they will need to win over three groups of voters.” I thought – yep, Blair’s Third Way triangulation.
Alot of total rubbish in this with the anti-immigrant scapegoat meme well to the fore.
For example Social care costs – have exploded because we’ve an aging population and a supply shortage thus driving cost inflation. The fact the private market also malfunctions in this area, adding debt, makes it even worse. Yet NC you blame immigrants who are looking after the elderly in these care settings. Beggar’s belief
As regards Pensions, there is an issue about contributions in and out but here’s the thing about migrants – firstly when we had more EU migration they tended to go back to their original country at point of retirement and thus alongside us not paying the cost of their education, the economics for the UK were even more positive. The clowns that supported Brexit messed that advantage up didn’t they. Secondly migrants tend to social networks that provide more family support – if we let them have their family nearby of course. Some of this is cultural. And that reduces long term care costs on the State. You won’t find a disproportionate number of immigrants in the Care sector having care. And of course the poorer die earlier so the actuarial costs less.
It is your ignorance that is most glaring. Immigrants make a net positive economic contribution. Some lower paid perhaps not but then that’s the same for the lower paid Brits.
Whatever you and other think significant immigration is going to continue because our demographics will require it. Much more important is the question of assimilation and the best of British values being a key expectation. It’s this honesty the Tories and the Right needs to grasp.
Clearly you haven’t read the economic research on this…or won’t accept it…
Social care costs for the elderly has grown 3.2% since 2022 (LGA data). Social care costs associated with asylum has increased 16.4% in the same period (derived from FCDO data). Hence my use of the word exploded to describe the growth in these costs. Feel free to let me know your sources.
Repeating the same twaddle over and over again won’t make it become reality.
As it becomes obvious that the ideology of mass immigration has failed, the more unhinged you become in the defence of it.
It’s tiresome.
Hold on a moment JW.
How do you know a) that the EU migrants go back to their own countries when they retire and b) that we aren’t still on the hook for the pensions rights they accrued while in the UK ?
Afraid I have to call BS on your assumptions here.
On point a), it’s surely too early to know since very few have reached retirment age. I reckon you’re guessing.
On point b), I bet you they retain all their pension rights. As, indeed they should. I feel pretty certain that the EU withdrawal agreement will have all this nailed down.
Let’s add point c), just to be more complete. The plain fact that we’re building up massive future pension liabilities to low-paid immigrants and many, many of their dependents who can never pay enough contributions to cover these costs. And are not net tax payers today, and therefore cannot be doing anything to pay for current pensions (since they are net takers).
The average time EU citizens who came here under Freedom of Movement remained in the country was c.5 years. The stats show clearly the overwhelming majority did not retire here or had no intention of doing so. This is the exact opposite of the pattern for non-EU citizens who came and are still (in increasing numbers) coming here. It is the post retirement costs (eg healthcare) which constitute the significant fiscal burden of immigration.
It always comes back to democracy and its definition. If a small number of clever people think that immigration is good and a large number of not-so-clever people think that immigration is bad, what is the meaning of democracy?
For me, your theories are wrong because they are not democratic. The same is true of your Brexit ‘clowns’. If a large number of people want Brexit and a smaller number don’t, what is the definition of ‘clown’. You are the clown because you can’t identify with ordinary people in the street who see their lives destroyed. See Paul Embery’s book on the disaster in Dagenham, where his homeland was destroyed. Go for a while and live in Bradford or Rotherham or any northern town and then spout your wonderful theories. Then you will see that you, in your comfort behind a computer, righting the problems of the world, telling us that we are clowns, you are the clown.
For me, your theories are wrong because they are not democratic. The same is true of your Brexit ‘clowns’.
JW is not a democrat.
The defenders of the status quo immigration are despicable. Those who blame Farage for this are only more so.
Where is your evidence for any of this? Are you really trying to claim that adding 15 million people to the population almost overnight without providing the infrastructure needed to support them is beneficial for anyone other than asset owners like you?
By now it ought to be clear even to you that the whole experiment has been a massive catastrophe.
Immigrants not migrants- get it right
Not according to the ONS. And not all cultures are equal. No one is complaining about Filipinos if you get what I mean. Mass third world immigration is a giant Ponzi Scheme that will end in mass social unrest or genocide. We are not multicultural animals whether we like it or not. 1.6 million immigrants are not working in this country and are a huge drain.
Nonsense.
I’m pro measured immigration and think the NHS would crumble without it. The foreign staff in our local hospitals are as wonderful as the huge demand allows. But more immigration, too fast to assimilate, just creates more customers for free NHS healthcare. It’s a Ponzi scheme.
The .mission ought to be based around how do we get our existing population to do those jobs. It’s kind of immoral to lure away talent ftom developing countries.
This is one of the most lunatic comments I have ever read in UnHerd. Ms. Glover is as obsessed about immigration as some Labour MPs are obsessed about racism. She criticises an article that Sir Paul did not write.
In fact, it’s an excellent article. It itemises the Tories’ problems with admirable clarity. It offers feasible solutions. Bravo, Sir Paul.
“Immigration is adding dependents – workless households – faster than immigration is growing the economy”
You may be right but could you provide a source for this? Perhaps naively, I had assumed that, since the vast majority of migration was legal (which it is) few inward migrant households would be workless.
I’d have more confidence in this argument if it hadn’t made a couple of clumsy misrepresentations about tax cuts, greed and the nature of the Truss/Kwarteng agenda.
There is almost at this stage a cross-party consensus that the tax burden is too high and is suppressing growth. It is absurd therefore to dismiss a Tory proposition for tax cuts from this historic post-war high as being motivated by a desire to appeal to voters’ greed. (I’ll ignore for now whether the natural desire of taxpayers to keep more of the money made through their own efforts can even be called greed at all – why is this called “greed”, but the desire of others to receive money that’s taken off others by the taxman not called greed?)
As for Truss/Kwarteng, the package of measures they bungled the implementation of amounted to a reversal of the Tory rises in the tax burden since they came to power, and would have recreated the same tax burden as existed for most of the previous New Labour administration under Blair/Brown. Dismissing this as some sort of serve-the-rich fiscal landscape is silly and the author ought to be ashamed of himself for it.
That’s not to say that I don’t accept the need to do something about the UK’s economic hinterlands: it has been grim across much of Britain for over 40 years at this stage and it’s just not fair. Michael Gove, much though I dislike him, does at least have a good track record of coming up with policy that achieves the twin goals of being both effective and breaking through the resistance of the Blob, so if the plan exists, it should be picked up.
There’s a cross-party concensus that the tax burden is too high !!!
News to me. And will be to you by the end of this month after the Budget.
In fact, there might be a cross-party concensus here. But it would be that the tax burden is *too low* ! Watch what they do. Not what they say.
Yes, such a consensus almost exists – note my use of the word “almost” in my first comment, which you ignored. And even past the “almost” where there’s actually a consensus, there are always some who disagree, that’s why I didn’t use the word “unanimity”.
The non-dom tax and VAT on private school fees have both already backfired and there is acceptance in both the new government and the rest of the UK’s political parties that these attempts to get significantly more money by the taxman are now not going to work.
The tax burden may well rise further, as you predict, but it will not produce higher tax revenues.
Five, not just four, failed leaders. Cameron was able to form a coalition government at his first attempt but didn’t win a majority.
He won a majority the next time because the success of UKIP forced him to pledge a referendum on Brexit…and he then didn’t plan for a Leave vote.
In the meantime he had centralised the Tory party and ignored the members.
None of the above can be counted as success.
Collier thinks so because Cameron and himself are ideological bedfellows. After all Cameron was the heir to Blair and Collier worked for Blair. Although Collier protests he has no ideology, all he confirms is he is utterly blind to his own biases.
I know. I thought at first he was that editor of the New Statesman who had a little difficulty with the law .
“Those now retired have captured too large a share of past growth, and a new leader must acknowledge that”.
Every single person of my age group knew lockdown was going to create misery for the prospects of our young. We didn’t want it. The academics, journalists, politicians and first ministers did, and revelled in leading the country to self-harm.
If you think any of us want our “large share” of past growth, acquired through 50 years of almost continued employment in the private sector as it happens, handing over to a gang of management consultants dreaming up schemes and slogans for the WFH Civil Service, you can think again.
Isn’t it remarkable that it’s the private sector that are leading the return to normal office work ? And the public sector who are doubling down on irregular working patterns (I believe “irregular” is a new Labour word for stuff like this) and pushing for 4 day work for 5 days pay.
The author’s correct that there’s huge inequality in Britain today. But not where he claims it is. It’s between those who generate wealth and are exposed to market risks (e.g. jobs, pensions, investments). And those who don’t – and are mainly in the public sector and associated areas.
Another anti work from home bore. I am in tne puic sector and work from home. It has increased my productivity and I am glad that Labour, who I voted for, has encouraged it. You must learn to cope better.
I’ve worked widely in the public and private sectors. The words ‘work’ and ‘productivity’ mean something quite different in the private sector.
A good start would be to take a close look at other countries and their succesful policies? Switzerland, for example- low tax, low immigration, low crime despite every household containing a military weapon, functioning transport and roads.. strong currency, well managed debt, and no one knows or cares who is PM?… and, of course, not in EU!
I suspect that what matters to them is the percentage of income deducted for tax, rather than the actual amount.
If we cut immigration to sub-100k as promised repeatedly since 2010, most of our other problems would be solved. Just get on with it – Two-tier Keir is a dud and is never going to win the next election. Get Kemi in, do a deal with Farage (stand aside in his top target seats) and bob’s yer uncle!
Yes exactly! And it stands eff all chance of actually being done…
The Tory Party has too many ‘Managed Decliners’ in the shadows. They inhibit the very few that might have done right for the country.
Labour is the “nasty party” – always has been, always will be. And they couldn’t wait to get their snouts in the trough.
No. Farage’ policy is not scapegoating of immigrants. its just that the UK government is unwilling to implement its own laws.
Why confine this to the Tories when it’s thirty years of technocratic mismanagement.
The Conservatives need to:
1. Start acknowledging that more public spending does not mean better public services because so much of it is wasted on pointless bureaucracy. A proper programme of public service reform on a non-ideological, non-Blairite model could save money and improve services.
2. Recognise that immigration at the level seen in recent years is unsustainable, drives down wages for the poorest and is the main reason we have a housing crisis. This would win back the SE which doesn’t want to lose its green belt and help younger voters get better pay and afford housing. And it is not a racist position.
3. Tackle the Social Care system by implementing the Dilnott proposals.
4. Resurrect ‘Levelling Up’ and do it properly.
5. Reform the benefits system to encourage work
Farage for PM! https://x.com/mattwatersva/status/1838898640821092569?s=46
In the USA, the oligarchic commitment to i.migrant invasion means that resources that should have been available for a terrible hurricanes deadly aftermath have already been spent on illegal immigrants, and the money is not available to help Americans.
One wouldnt expect much objectivity from Collier who is sympatheric to the left and Labour, but state engineered levelling down goes against all conservative principles, and Gove’s meddling is no recommendation as he also supports VAT on private education, it would be a foolish strategy.
I’d have thought improving certain areas would only make them more attractive to immigrants.
How is the Tory party he envisions any different from Labour and the Lib Dems? Doesn’t oppose unbridled immigration, doesn’t want to scale back Gov’t. Not a peep about ending Net Zero. In what way is it Conservative? Why does the UK need a third leftist/Green party?
If the Tories want to win again, it’s dead simple. 1) Drastically limit immigration, say 50K a year max, and deport a couple of million fake asylum seekers 2) Scrap Net Zero and launch massive fracking and oil exploration – build a sovereign wealth fund like Norway, 3) Re-industrialize the UK based on abundant cheap energy.
They’d stay in power for 20 years.
It’s pointless building a SWF while we have such a large national overdraft.
And Norwegians have TEN times the oil wealth that Brits do so, even without our National Debt, and the LDIs, you’ll need to amend your expectations, appropriately, especially as Labour are closing down the industry. 🙂
And it will be difficult to restart, if not impossible.
Thanks for this post.
I am tired of ignorant people talking about SWF in uk based on Norway example.
Yes Norway has many times oil wealth of uk (I thought it was more than 10 times) but population is 14 times smaller.
So per capita oil wealth is at least 140 times greater than it ever was in uk.
Good governance, for instance tax cuts.
You just have to confirm that government is going to get smaller and where to cut.
It won’t be easy and you are going to have to get elected with plan fully developed or the bureaucracy will sink it.
This is mostly froth.
Voters did not turn to Labour in their horde, fewer voted for them than Corbyn managed to attract.
Immigration is a giant issue, in the red wall as well as anywhere, and clearly, the author lives nowhere near one if he doesn’t know that.
Correct about the malignant affect of the Brownies in the Treasury, they need removing.
The Tories will never be believed again. It will take twenty years for them to live down trying to get the Guardian’s approval. By then it will be too late.
Perhaps reading Reform’s manifesto would have helped. It focused on business, including gas and oil, getting energy costs down and several other normal Conservative policies as well as immigration.
They are in their infancy. Flawed. Incomplete. But they are not going away, and even Kemi Badenoch, who I have a lot of time for, won’t change that.
The solidarity tax that the West Germans had to pay for East Germany,lasted for decades and only caused resentment.It’s 7.5% really hit the working classes in the West and backfired politically.
Not a chance with the present bunch of Liberal Democrat’s. End One Nation Tories and sling out the liberals and they’re still missing a leader. Kemi’s the only interesting one but she can’t beat Farage and Co.
It’s over for them for a decade at least.
The author’s argument is the same sort of claptrap used by defenders of the regime to blame the French peasants for their plight under Louis XVI
The author is fairly delusional.
LibDems did well in Remainer constituencies who haven’t forgiven Tories, and the Reform strongholds are in left behind Brexit voting areas. The Libs was a protest vote and a tactical vote by Labour or Greens supporters in constituencies where Labour couldn’t win. The Tories lost because many right leaning voters thought recent Tory leaders were too LibDem on welfare and immigration. Both lots were like Turkeys voting for Christmas.
Kidults vote left because it’s fashionable, without the life experience to question the logic or cause and effect of proposed Labour policies.
How could any levelling up agenda or Brexit advances have taken place between Brexit in 2019 and 2021 when Covid closed the world down?
Why should the generations following Boomers have accumulated now what retired have taken a lifetime to accumulate from hard work and prudence? Especially as they grew up with few comforts and cheap consumer goods compared to today. The next generation are going to inherit anything not eaten up by old age care, and be pretty well off. Then there was the misogyny, lifetime gender pay and pension gap, and drudgery instead of rewarding careers for women.
My concern is that youngsters today want to coast, and don’t realise how long they might live, and how rough being poor in old age really is. Average care home fees stand at £4,800 a month, more like £6,000 in the South.