One of life’s enduring mysteries, is why people apparently become more conservative as they get older. Something I refer to here as the Slide to the right (STTR).
Of course, not everyone succumbs, but averaged across a large enough population, the trend is demonstrably true. As we’ll see below, it’s interesting that this trend also varies according to educational level… the higher the standard of your education, the less likely you are to move away from your earlier principles.
As soon as I became politically aware, I was puzzled that the UK Conservative Party was in any way viable; the Conservatives seemed to be a natural fit for the rich and powerful and well-connected, a well as professional and business people; but they were surely a minority – by the type of housing prevalent where I grew up, most people were clearly working class.
But I was also aware of ‘class traitors’… every street had some; working class people with airs and graces. They probably didn’t have any more money than anyone else, but they used to go to the Conservative Club because “you meet a better class of person there”. The sort of people who would describe the husband’s job as Refuse Disposal Engineer instead of dustman. “All fur coats and no knicker’s” was the popular idiom of the time.
Fortunately, there were ‘class traitors’ on the other side. Conservative governments clearly wanted to make the rich, richer and do very little for the poor and working classes. So altruism drove quite a few professional people to vote for Labour. I remember our family doctor was a socialist!
And I became aware that in the post war years following Hitler’s defeat, that there was still some regard Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts and their antisemitic, anti-immigration rhetoric. I came to realise that a lot of people voted right-of-centre out of anger, and the need to blame someone for the country’s (perceived) ills.
Personally, I feel no more empathy with the political right in my 70s than I did in my youth, and this seems true of the people close to me, but across the population, it can’t be denied that people become more conservative as they grow older. When I return to my working class roots, I find that a lot of my (former) friends now support Nigel Farage as he drags his party towards fascism.
Fascism has never, ever been “on the side of the angels”. They are an ideology that relies on hatred, division and intolerance. They have never stood for enlightened or ethical government. They say things like “immigration is undermining our sovereignty and culture”, but if they ever get into office, civil rights, our very constitution, and what makes us British, would be the first things to suffer.
So what’s going on?
For a start, I think we can reject cognitive decline… as you can see from the charts, the STTR trend begins in people’s thirties.
And we need to acknowledge that it’s not a level playing field; the entire planet is shifting to the right. And for no better reason than it suits big business. The left wants to put checks and balances in place, to protect shareholders, the environment, public health, etc. Big business resents this as it potentially impacts profits, so it buys politicians with campaign contributions (aka legal bribes), it has a huge influence on the media, and it also uses its money and power to change public opinion, and in doing so, subverts the democratic process. As an example, an article in the Scientific American showed that the fossil fuel and related industries “…funnelled $558 million to almost 100 climate denial organizations…”. The result is a lot of people have been persuaded that global warming is a left-wing plot.
I also think it’s important to recognise that as a species, we humans are not evolving in any meaningful sense. We have the same fight or flight mechanisms that kept our ancestors alive 100,000 years ago. We have the same instincts and fears even though most of us live in civilised communities that have almost nothing in common with the living conditions 4,000 generation ago, so it’s not surprising that human nature still includes traits such xenophobia, anger and violence.
Being civilised is how most of us deal with these feelings. Sometimes this involves a little give and take… like being good neighbours. Sometimes this involves trying to see things from another person’s perspective. Sadly, as we’ve seen in America recently, there are too many people who exploit these feelings; they legitimise anger and xenophobia and create a culture of fear for their own political ends. And it’s not just politicians… the media and big business all benefit from making people feel insecure.
Of course, as we age, we also find it harder to keep up with emerging technologies, and a lot of people find societal changes, world affairs and major domestic issues to be increasingly complicated and ambiguous. (Israel/Iran/Syria/Hamas, climate change, immigration, refugees, LGBT anyone?)
And it’s no surprise to anyone that we were happier when we’re younger. Actually… happier, sadder, angrier, more elated, more adventurous, more energetic, more motivated. More alive! Younger people may think they have the weight of the world on their shoulders, getting educated, working hard, competing for advancement whilst buying houses, being good citizens, parents, wives, husbands, etc. But these are the halcyon days they often later look back on, and wish they’d taken more time to appreciate what they had.
I suspect that a lot of people respond to the melancholia that seems to be a natural part of ageing, and think that someone or something must be to blame.
So through the culture of fear, or simply the need to have someone to blame, people become susceptible to the rhetoric of populism, where ambitious, often unscrupulous, but mostly less capable politicians recognise that a lot of people just want to be told that their problems are due to immigrants, or communism, or gays, or minorities, or intellectuals, or the education system.
These politicians tell their target audience exactly what they want to hear. They persuade the voters that they alone have a handle on these problems. Sadly, once they’re in power, they quickly find they’re out of their depth. Their populist rhetoric was illusory, and they don’t have the intelligence or political acumen to fix the real problems, and so they then blame the opposition for all their failings.
I say ‘less capable’ because the Churchills, the Eisenhowers, the Kennedys and the Obamas would never feel the need to deceive the public in this way. But probably since Ronald Reagan, populism has been on the rise, and since then, these tactics have been adopted with some (electoral) success by the likes of Trump, Putin, Boris Johnson, Benjamin Netanyahu, Nigel Farage, Jair Bolsonaro, to name but a few.
Trump for example told Americans that everything that was wrong with America was because of immigrants and Democrats and gays. He’s a career con-man, and was astute enough to realise that a lot of people wanted to believe this. He told them “We’ll build a wall on the Mexican border and make the Mexicans pay for it.” “We’ll clamp down on immigration, especially Muslims”, “Oh and by the way, it’s OK to hate the blacks”. Trump had correctly guessed that racism and xenophobia were alive and well, and hiding just below the surface. Anyway, a sufficient percentage of the US electorate liked what they heard, and despite his having no experience of politics, and some serious question marks over his personality and his ethics, they made him president.
It took four years, but America finally found they were tired of his lies, his bragging, his self-obsession, his name-calling, and ultimately his failed policies, and threw him out on his ear.
Even more scary is that they’ve done it again. Despite his failure as a president, and his failings as a human being, 76 million Americans still think he’s the best person for the job. Which certainly shows the power of the media. Fox news is by far the most watched news source on American TV. And they lie, and actually admitted in a recent libel defence, that they are an entertainment channel and you’d have to be pretty dumb to believe everything we tell you! And yet according to Pew Research, 93% of Republican voters get their political views from Fox News.
So far, it’s mostly been right-wing politicians who’ve adopted populism. And it’s probably no coincidence that there is a documented correlation between voting intention and intelligence, or at least the level of education. People with advanced education are more likely to vote left or centre.
Check this out: https://futurism.com/neoscope/left-wing-beliefs-intelligence
And it’s self-evident that the better educated people are, the more likely they are to see through populist rhetoric.
Which explains why (in the USA), there is no left-wing equivalent of Fox News. Or (in the UK), the relative success of The Sun newspaper when compared with the Daily Mirror. Left-wing supporters hold their preferred media channels to higher standards. They have little time for opinion, rumour, or gossip, and are more inclined to say “give me the facts and I’ll make my own mind up”. Right-wing supporters on the other hand are clearly happy watching or reading opinion-based journalism. More confirmation, if it were needed, of the correlation between political leaning and education/intelligence.
And it’s probably for this reason that in the USA, there is no left-wing equivalent of Fox News. Or in the UK, the relative success of The Sun newspaper when compared with the Daily Mirror. Left-wing supporters hold their preferred media channels to higher standards. They have little time for opinion, rumour, or gossip, and are more inclined to say “give me the facts and I’ll make my own mind up”. Right-wing supporters on the other hand are clearly happy watching or reading opinion-based journalism. More confirmation, if it were needed, of the correlation between political leaning and education/intelligence.
In America, the Republican party tacitly acknowledge this correlation, and they have declared themselves to be firmly against ‘higher education’ and ‘critical thinking’, allegedly because ‘it undermines parental authority’. They clearly realise that an unsophisticated, less educated support base is more susceptible to their brand of rhetoric.
Checkout this chart.
When you factor in educations, we still see the STTR as the population ages, but the slide is more extreme amongst the poorly educated. The slide to the far-right is a similar trend, but again, less so amongst the better educated – just checkout the turquoise Reform UK figures.
Disturbingly though, the slide-to-the-right seems to be accelerating. Spend a minute on this chart. This is the age spread for the 1997 (won by Labour) UK election, versus the 2017 (won by the Tories), and it makes interesting viewing.
For the Labour victory in 1997, the share of the vote amongst Labour voters by age dropped by 8%, from 49% (Age 18-24) to 41% (Age 65+). In the 2017 Tory victory the share of Labour voters by age decreased by 47%… it went from 66% (Age 18-24) to 19% (Age 65+).
So in 20 years the slide to the right has increased from 8% to 47%!
Make of that what you will, but after the success of the American media in deceiving the public, it’s difficult to ignore the influence of a British press.
The role of the media.
“There will come a time when the rich own all the media, and it will be impossible for the public to make an informed choice”.
– Albert Einstein
Based on the number of newspapers sold, nearly 90% is owned by Tory supporters and donors, such as Rupert Murdoch, Frederick Barclay, Lord Rothermere and Richard Desmond. In the 20 years in question, the populist message amongst the right-wing tabloids (The Sun, The Daily Mail and The Express) has become increasingly strident, clearly aimed at this particularly susceptible sector of the electorate.
A campaign of lies, distortions and half-truths was arguably responsible for the UK leaving Europe. Do you remember these headlines in the run-up to the referendum?
- Hands off our light ale (Daily Express)
- Now the EU is to ban the acre (Daily Express)
- Pipe down! Brussels slaps a noise order on bagpipes (The Sunday Times,)
- Bombay Mix to be renamed (The Sun)
- Now Euro killjoys ban children’s party toys (Daily Express)
- Your 21-gun salutes are just too loud, EU tells the Royal Artillery (Mail on Sunday)
- Church bells are silenced by fear of EU law (The Daily Telegraph)
- EU could force cut in drink limit (Daily Mail)
- New EU map makes Kent part of same ‘nation’ as France (Sunday Telegraph)
So largely because the major right-wing tabloids were owned by Eurosceptics like Murdoch, the UK said goodbye to their biggest marketplace, as well as the possibilities for living, studying, working and easy travel in all EU countries. A classic case of the tail wagging the dog.
Brexit is now seen to be a busted flush… according to https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/ 62% of respondents now want the UK to rejoin the EU. Even David Davis, one of the original architects of Brexit, now agrees that Britain should have closer ties with the EU.
In 2012, the Leveson Enquiry into the News of the World phone-hacking scandal, found that press standards in the UK were too lax, and recommended that the UK should have a “regulatory body with punitive powers, arbitration, prominent corrections and apologies”. Sadly the body that was created by David Cameron to enforce this, the Independent Press Standard Organisation (IPSO) falls way short of these powers, and the inevitable result is the UK’s press continue to lie and deceive with impunity.
One last thing… if the slide to the right is accelerating, how did the UK end up with a Labour government in 2024? The simple answer is Nigel Farage. He’s that breed of unprincipled, ambitious, opportunistic, populist politicians that no-one in the right mind would buy a used car from. But he taps into people’s xenophobia and tells his support base exactly what they want to hear, and his popularity continues to confound expectations. Fortunately for the country, his personal ambition cost the incumbent Tory government the 2024 election. Labour only increased their share of the vote by 1.6%, but Reform UK took 12.3% out of the Tory vote, leaving the Tories with their worst defeat ever.
Conclusions?
- As the population ages, they feel disenfranchised, confused and powerless, and find it easy to conclude that the changes that come with modern society and the ‘global village’ are somehow to blame. Along comes the right-wing, populist politicians and press who confirm these opinions, and they gain these votes without having to do much at all.
- The evidence seems to suggest that left-wing voters are more likely to stay true to their beliefs as they age, possibly because they are better educated and are more likely to reject the shallow appeal of populism. I suspect (and hope) this also means that the UK never gets a populist left-wing government!
- What cannot be ignored is that the populist agenda is being pushed by a tabloid press, no longer content to merely report the news but need to influence it, targeting the unsophisticated, credulous or naïve voters, who are least likely to fact-check what they read. And we’ve just seen in the US, what an unprincipled right-wing media can do when media standards are not enforced. It’s another case of the tail wagging the dog. So the UK desperately needs higher press and media standards; and perhaps then the newspapers will be held to account for politically motivated lies and distortions.
- Nigel Farage is Britain’s answer to Donald Trump. He (Nigel Farage) leads a party that manages to remain viable because there are enough leftovers from the days of the National Front… people who think that division and intolerance is the answer. In reality Farage is a political low-life, driven by ambition and not much else. His “We give £350 million a week to the EU. Let’s give it to the NHS instead” on the Brexit Bus was an embarrassment to even pathological liars like Boris Johnson. He’s an intellectual lightweight, constantly being shown-up on LBC and BBC’s question time.
About the author.
I would describe my politics as centre-left, but more than anything, I am radically anti-radical. I don’t think that Marxism, fascism, communism, isolationism, totalitarianism, religious fundamentalism, or racial supremacism have ever solved any problems, or made the world a better place. Nor have xenophobia, racism, booking-burning, and the sort of intolerances espoused by both extremes of the political spectrum – not just the far-right.
I know that the LGBT issue makes a lot of people uncomfortable, and I don’t have any special empathy with it… my philosophy is mostly pragmatic. Gender ambiguity/confusion is a real thing, and driving it underground as we did with gays until the 1960’s isn’t any sort of solution. No matter what the populist politicians would have us believe.
