This is why the Tories will never be the party of the young

Do you know anyone under the age of 40 who votes Tory? I certainly don’t.

The party itself – to give it some credit – knows it’s got a problem with its reliance on its “60 to 80” age group fanbase and its dearth of Gen Z supporters: it is trying, desperately, to reverse it. Former Tory leader William Hague warned this week in The Times that without young voters, the Tories are sunk – that the party needs economic policies that chime with under-40s, with an emphasis on “opportunity and aspiration”.

Fellow Tory grandee Lord Heseltine has also said he fears for his party’s over-zealous embrace of Nigel Farage’s “populist extremism”, saying instead that they should focus on defence, the economy, the rule of law, climate crisis and “the restoration of British influence in the world”; an agenda “that should appeal to the younger electorate that will be in place by the next election”.

Now, have a think – have you ever known anyone young who openly admitted to voting Tory? When I was at school, before we were able to vote – but old enough to pledge our political allegiances, very loudly and only half-ignorantly, in the sixth-form common room – there was only one person who was a nailed-on Young Conservative. How did we know? He carried around a picture of John Major in his wallet. He didn’t come with us on a messy and faintly horrific group holiday to Tenerife, where we took our clothes off on a stage for a contest called “Mr/Miss Isla Bonita 1999”. I expect he was thankful for that. He’s also probably enormously successful, now; but I won’t be Googling him, in case one day he is my boss.

Yet now, years later, cringing at the video footage of young Conservatives awkwardly belting out Sweet Caroline alongside their heroine, Kemi Badenoch – at the Tory party Conference, this week – I was immediately reminded of these peculiar few; and the real problem facing Kemi and co… which is that the Tories will never be the party of the young. Never. And it’s not to do with policy.

Take a moment to look at the footage of Kemi’s karaoke and witness the self-conscious dancing of the token “youff” behind her, reminiscent of that Mr Bean-esque viral video of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer cavorting on stage at the launch of Windows 95. Witness the overwhelming whiteness of these sparse “Tory boys” (and they are, mostly, boys); fronted, as they are, by the likes of Robert Jenrick, who’s been accused of racism after complaining loudly about how he “didn’t see another white face” in Handsworth, Birmingham; and Badenoch is backing him. Think of the number of “shy Tories” that emerged in the 1990s, where voters found it too embarrassing; too cringe to publicly admit allegiance.

A panicked, renewed focus on the young explains the shadow chancellor Mel Stride’s dangling carrot, unveiled to great rapture at conference: a £5,000 tax break for young homebuyers, by way of a national insurance rebate to help with their first house purchase as part of a plan to “reward work”. As a bid to win back the youth vote and veer away from OAPs, it’s not a bad one – but it still won’t work.

This is where the Tory party is going so badly wrong: they’re just not “different” enough – from other parties and each other. Gen Z, as we keep hearing, is increasingly attracted to polarised parties on the hard-right and hard-left. Young people are Reform, Green – and nothing in between.

They want barking soundbites and pithy reels; passion and action. They want marches and leaders with loudspeakers who urge them onto the streets for Palestine or for flags; not a crackdown on civil liberties. We keep hearing how Reform UK is surging with Gen Z men and women, thanks – presumably – to their presence on TikTok (the party currently has 448,000 followers). Those tempted by their divisive rhetoric are unemployed, skint, depressed – and they want to feel galvanised. The Tory party simply can’t cut through. It doesn’t speak the same language.

In this tech bro, Maga-infused world of anti-establishmentarianism and AI, Kemi in a fusty blue suit singing Sweet Caroline and dancing as badly as Theresa May simply can’t match up. The Tories aren’t just antiquated, unpopular and old-fashioned, they’re out of touch. Very Offline.

Don’t take it from me, take it from Gen Alpha: for they will be marking their ballots at 16 at the next election. When I speak to my 13-year-old daughter and her friends, they’re achingly political – but they do not resonate with Labour or the Tories. At all. They’re interested, mainly, in America: they share inspirational speeches by Kamala Harris; they reject anything remotely related to Trump; they talk politics like it's going out of fashion and want to know exactly what you think.

They saw Charlie Kirk being taken down in debates long before his killing was served up to them by an algorithm that pays scant regard to children’s nightmares; they challenge their teachers at school about rights to abortion and educate each other on the importance of gender-neutral spaces. They are, by and large, ignored (and so they, too, ignore) dead old parties like the Conservatives. They hear of the “war on woke”, eye-roll – and shrug them off as irrelevant. I’ve watched them do it.

And the Tories only have themselves to blame. They’ve knowingly stoked “culture wars”, want to scrap so-called “Mickey Mouse degrees”, decimated the arts, underfunded schools, universities and hospitals, rowed back on net zero pledges and gone on and on (and on) about immigration, when all the polls show Gen Z largely think immigration is good for the economy – and society. They’ve floated the idea of punitive national service and consistently put pensioners first: ruling out scrapping the state pension triple lock. And sure, they’re now trying to give wannabe homeowners five grand – but that won’t even touch the sides of a down payment on a deposit, not in this new age of austerity.

The average age at which voters are likely to become a Tory instead of voting Labour is now 63, when it used to be 34 as little as a decade ago. So, why aren’t young people drawn to the Tories? Because they’re a party that has proved, time and time again, that they don’t understand younger generations. And, even worse: they don’t care.