The older we get, the more conservative we become?

[EddyF]

Just wondering if people believe this. I’m in my thirties and although I have always had real socialist views and I have always voted Labour, I am struggling with some of my current viewpoints which lean more to the conservative way. I think I have lost a bit of societal empathy and seeing things as a ‘dog eat dog world; everyone out for themselves’.

There are so many issues I see locally (London) that I just think not everyone can be saved. The services are stretched; high streets are depressing and people have too many needs and often those needs are not isolated and are multiple. I feel less empathetic and more “can’t you just help yourself”. There doesn’t appear to be a safety net or one that is efficient enough, which to my surprise, has harden me a bit. Maybe it is age😆

I believe that the left/right division is now less based on age than it is on sex, certainly amongst Gen Z. Women in general are supporting progressive, left of centre parties, and men supporting more right wing parties.

Here's an interesting article about it:

https://www.psa.ac.uk/psa/news/gender-and-generational-shifts-uk-voting-trends-what-should-we-think

The youngest group had lower votes for Labour, and higher for Reform, than the next two higher age groups

The youngest age group had fewer votes for Reform than any other demographic. The leftwing vote in that bracket was split by the highest Green vote overall. The graph here is very clear.

https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/49978-how-britain-voted-in-the-2024-general-election

As I've got older, I've not become more conservative. But I have grown in experience, knowledge and understanding.

It's complex. My Dad, Labour voting trade unionist in his younger years lurch towards the right in his 50s and 60s, but in his final decades moved towards the left again.

Maybe the right coalesce around certain core values whilst the left are idealists. Perhaps you lose your idealism as you get older.

I think it is true. As a young woman I was very left and into dark green politics. Now I still care about the environment etc but wish i'd gone for high paying jobs and feathered my own nest. Very glad dd wants to be a banker. The idealism of youth dosn't last.

Communism is a nice idea but whywould anyone train for years to be a surheon if they earned the same as an HCA?

The super rich should pay their taxes though.

I agree that capitalism has a lot to answer for too though and is very destructive.

Fuck that smug shit

There is a clear correlation between more education and more left-leaning views

In my fifties, still a radical green leftie, and much better informed than when I was 20

Russia went from feudalism to space in about forty years under communism.

Im steadfastly committed to safety nets including free nhs, disability benefits for the vulnerable etc

But i worry at the moment that the help i want directed to the very vulnerability who simply cannot support themselves etc, is spread among too many. The definition of what constitutes "disability" seems to extend to anyone who finds anything a bit hard now

@cardibach ok so you said nonsense to my opinion on the left trying to shift the Overton window based on identity politics.

So how is it that so many middle aged women who voted LP for years are now politically homeless like me?

They DID shift the Overton window when they started the nonsense about identifying as something rather than class analysis.

Eg vulnerable women who are in prison, but putting violent males in there as they "identify" as a woman.

The only thing restoring my waning faith in the left is Wes Streeting and his support for the nurses in their case for single sex spaces.

Most of the other LP MPs have lost their minds.

The right-wing junta in Argentina used similar tactics at exactly the same time.

You mean the Soviet Union. It also built a few gulags and committed a genocide in Ukraine with Holodomor. But don't let facts get in the way of your idealism.

Also the right.wing are famously tolerant of people who are unable or unwilling to work and never force them into work or cut their benefits and leave them to starve to death

“There is a clear correlation between more education and more left-leaning views”

Talk about smug.

If there’s one aphorism I hate, it’s this one. Leftism correlates to education today, not because leftism is the intelligent choice, but because leftism has reorientated society to mean more status for graduates. Decades ago, when leftism actually meant a better deal for the working classes, it wasn’t the choice of the educated.

You’d think a Marxist would understand this.

Why should people who are 'unwilling to work' be funded by the taxpayer?

Of course,. Both sides have committed terrible atrocities. Neoliberal capitalism is a massive killer and is on line to bring the human race to an end in a few decades.

Actually that was nothing to do with communism and everything to do with forcing German V2 rocket scientists after WW2(at the threat of death) to help develop their rocket technology.

Prior to WW2 the Soviet Union was technologically very backward and was struggling with a basic agricultural economy, technically they would have been hard pushed to build fireworks let alone space rockets.

@cardibach

"But actually, using logic, austerity and right wing politics clearly don’t work. As a logical thinker you should be abandoning them. Assuming you are one."

Thank you for your detailed political and economic counter argument on why right wing politics "doesn't work".

Whilst I'm waiting for that let me turn to "austerity ". Austerity in itself is an action to fix problems from other policies (principally high debt. Just like going cutting spending in January is an action to fix over spending during Christmas.

The problem with the economics of the left is that haven't really progressed beyond the Keynesian economics that they studied at A Level.

Borrowing more money to economic prosperity doesn't work as Liz Truss and the current French economic crisis have shown. Currently the UK spends approximately the same amount of money on debt interest as it does on education- this is not a sustainable position.

How come everything was cut to the bone under the Tories and the economy is a complete shambles with record levels of debt?

Austerity in itself is an action to fix problems from other policies (principally high debt.

And it failed spectacularly. Debt continued to rise and public services are broken. Austerity was ideological and its effects will continue to blight the country long after I’m dead.

Me too.

The problem with the economics of the left is that haven't really progressed beyond the Keynesian economics that they studied at A Level.

The problem with the right is that they haven't really progressed beyond the toddler "I'm All Right, Jack" developmental stage.

I'm astonished no one's mentioned student politics yet. That's often wheeled out for a bray. In fact Badenoch, made sure to bring it up at PMQ. The original thinker that she is.

@username299

"How come everything was cut to the bone under the Tories and the economy is a complete shambles with record levels of debt?"

Because everything wasn't cut to the bone and to do so was becoming politically untenable. Equally the economy interest payments on the existing debt started to cut into the Government's ability to spend on other useful things like education.

As for the record levels of debt spaffing £500 billion on Covid support measures really was the final straw.

@SharpOpalNewt

"The problem with the right is that they haven't really progressed beyond the toddler "I'm All Right, Jack" developmental stage."

Thank you for your detailed economic counter argument.

Another quote for you:

The right believe in ambition and personal responsibility which the left criticises as the politics of greed and selfishness.

The left believes in equality and fairness which the right criticises as the politics of envy and economically unworkable.