Where are Sunak’s election pledges for middle-aged voters?

The “battle bus” itineraries of the party leaders at the start of an election campaign show what their parties are hoping to achieve in the weeks leading up to voting. 

Rishi Sunak’s stop-offs reveal that he is fighting defensively – as might be expected of a party defending a majority in parliament. The Conservative leader is visiting constituencies that his party needs to hold, or, as with Chesham and Amersham on Monday, to win back after losing them at byelections. 

The two opposition knights, Sir Keir Starmer and Sir Ed Davey, are launching aggressive incursions into Tory territory which they hope to conquer. Labour and the Liberal Democrats do not always have this luxury when battling the Tories, but this time opinion polls embolden them both to anticipate enough gains to propel Starmer into Number 10.

Rishi Sunak is the leader who needs to come up with ways to change the run of this political game. His plan for national service is a bold gesture. It is more significant than the “gaffes” which have characterized the first seven days since he shocked his own side by announcing a polling date while rain poured down on him in Downing Street.

The national service idea was borrowed from a think tank and not discussed with his ministerial team. It is full of holes on costing, timing and enforcement. Labour has published a gleeful list of “53 unanswered questions for Rishi Sunak about his national service policy.” 

It has still grabbed the public’s attention in a campaign where excessive caution is leading the Labour frontrunners to offer nothing new so far, and very little detail about their known plans to “change” the country if they win the election.

This radical proposal to impact the lives of 18-year-olds prompts every generation to think carefully about what the politicians are offering to them and their cohort. Sunak has sparked a battle of the ages by following up on mandatory national service for young adults with “triple lock plus’ for pensioners. If re-elected the Conservatives will exempt the elderly from the tax clawbacks already factored in for the workforce. This should be worth between £100 and £275 a year.  

The discipline of the swagger stick for the young is being paired with mushy carrots for the remaining teeth of baby boomers. 

One of the most startling findings of recent polling is that the crossover age when a voter is more likely to back the Conservatives than Labour has shot up. JL Partners found that you now have to be 70 years old before being counted as a demographic Tory. That is 31 years older than it was five years ago. People in every cohort under 70 back Labour, reaching a peak of 60 per cent of those in their thirties.  

The Conservatives need to keep the grey vote on side and the young vote down to survive electorally. That has meant attempts at “gerrymandering” turnout – in the words of Jacob Rees-Mogg. The Conservatives banned colleges from registering students to vote. Old people’s freedom passes are acceptable ID to vote, but young persons’ travel cards are not. To be on the safe side, Sunak has timed the election for the 4 July, after the end of university terms.

Conservative policies for teenagers are proscriptive. Rishi Sunak wanted to ban them from ever buying tobacco. Some of his MPs propose taking away their mobile phones. The “bold new model for national service” purports to be offering “new opportunities” to 18-year-olds. The prime minister clearly thinks they need to pull their socks up as he tries “to create a shared sense of purpose among our young people and a renewed sense of pride in our country”. Many older voters agree with Sunak about keeping teenagers “out of trouble”, cramming the letters page of The Times with talk of “disciplinary advantages” and doing “possible miscreants a power of good”. 

These nostalgic dreams of square bashing and the sergeant major’s bark for all youngsters will be disappointed. The Conservatives are only proposing filling up army vacancies with competitive conscription for some 30,000 young men and women. Professional soldiers have pointed out that this is a massive number for a stretched military to absorb, train and house. But it is only a small fraction of the 700,000 teenagers who turn 18 each year. The rest will have to be found compulsory places in the voluntary sector. 

Labour has committed to reintroduce the tobacco ban although its general view seems to be that “the kids are alright”. Starmer laughed off the national service idea as “a sort of teenage Dad’s Army”.

His first steps include 6,500 extra teachers, funded by tax on private schools. Labour now backs reducing the voting age to 16, a proposal long championed by the Liberal Democrats and Scottish Nationalists. Where this has been tried, school-age children are more likely to vote than 18 to 25-year-olds and seem to keep the voting habit. The Conservatives meanwhile seem set to extend dependency, with confused proposals to punish parents if their 18-year-olds dodge national service. 

The Conservative and Labour parties’ plans for the older and younger voters bypass the most pressing issues confronting these age cohorts. Keir Starmer admitted this week that he has abandoned his plans to end tuition fees. Neither have come up with constructive solutions to Universities’ funding black hole.  After Theresa May’s tribulations over the so-called “dementia tax”, they are both avoiding fresh thinking on social care. 

National service and breaks for pensioners stimulate debate and make headlines. They do not address what most voters say are their main worries, including the cost of living and the state of the NHS. Nor do they touch directly on matters such as childcare and housing, big concerns for the majority of the electorate – the people Starmer calls “working people” – who are neither pensioners nor first-time voters. 

Boris Johnson built his majority in 2019 with strong support in the 30s and 40s age groups; now, the Conservatives languish 50 per cent and 37 per cent behind Labour in these cohorts. The middle-aged are less concerned about immigration than the over 60s and they are unenthused about paying higher taxes to subsidise healthcare for pensioners. Jeremy Hunt’s national insurance cuts do not offset the increases in their overall tax burden. Early indications are that parents are worried by the implications of national service for their young children.

Forget young voters. Only 8 per cent of the under-25s said they were going to back the Tories and that was before the national service ploy. Sunak’s campaign announcements on National Service and pensions have fired up the older element of the Conservatives’ core support, which could be counted on anyway.

 As Rishi Sunak continues his defensive tour of election Britain, his team will always find children or pensioners in a pub for a photo opportunity. What should bother him are the worried faces of the middle-aged workers obliged to meet him when he turns up at their factories and offices.

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