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😆

When I did my A-Levels, my history teacher explained this by saying that, when you're young you want the kinds of policies that left wing parties offer. You likely have a young family or are on a very low income, so the welfare state really matters to you. You also want more houses to be built, or you need social housing. As you grow into your 40s and 50s, you've likely got your own house and your family is growing up and moving on. Now you want the kinds of policies that right wing parties offer- less payments towards the welfare state, interest rates on mortgages, less building on green spaces.
I don't know if this really is the reason though!

Does it go ever further right? I just don't see the evidence for it. First trans MP, introduced proposals for GRR reform, highest levels of inward migration, what's right wing about them at all? They've even got a black female leader

What even is right wing then?

They're all liberals

I agree with this.

If anything I've become more left as I've aged. Much to my very conservative parents total disgust!

“Classical liberal” has always been right wing, right wing doesn’t necessarily mean conservative. You can be socially conservative but economically left wing (eg. Christian democrat, or the Labour MP that tried to introduce blasphemy laws this week)

I think a lot of people are liberal then realise that left wing does not equal liberal, they just assumed it did.

Typically the left wants the state to do more stuff, the right typically doesn’t. Both sides have factions that sort of contradict each other too.

I believe you are right. The older you get you more you realize you seen it all before...

Exactly, this is a less left wing Labour than Blair in some ways.

I thought it was Winston Churchill.

And this is where Left and Right start to become nonsense labels, because the Blair-Brown era was the most socially progressive government I can recall.

Same.

I have a friend who's almost 90 and is as left wing as she's ever been.

I just want what our taxes apparently pay for to actually fucking work.

Six weeks for a doctor's appointment to be told first, no, no help available and then after pushing back that a cahms wait list is four years in our area. Wtf.

I think most people of all political leanings would agree that situations like this are not acceptable. There are so many examples of where our current system fails to deliver, that's just one.

Having been originally quite leftie then had the misfortune to work in an old school unionized environment, I've lost a lot of faith in what hard left policy actually delivers. See also the hard right of recent years, both sets of ideology lead to fuck ups time and again.

Inefficient and failing processes are obvious, low hanging fruit in just about every area of government and especially healthcare. Why does nobody ever tackle it?

In my experience, the most intelligent people end up skeptical, cynical, and mildly conservative. The word 'conservative' is misused, however. Thatcher, for example, wasn't a conservative. She was a revolutionary. George Orwell was far more conservative than her. Having read him extensively, I'm sure that were he alive today he'd see right through the woke fanatics. He'd want to conserve the literary canon, for example, and would be outraged by attempts to censor and re-write classic novels. He'd also want to conserve the green belt, and would probably be against mass immigration, mainly because it leads to endless house building and the destruction of the countryside. Margaret Thatcher didn't care about literature, or art, or beautiful buildings. She wasn't interested in conserving such things. Her focus was on deregulating the economy. It's kind of funny that the left spent years trying to smash up the class system, yet it was Thatcher who really destroyed it.

I have certainly moved to the right as I've got older (though I'm a vegan, oppose blood sports, support the LGBTQ community, believe in progressive taxation, and so on). In part that's down to my actual experience of left-wing people. In general, I find them deeply unpleasant, and deeply unimpressive. I've met very few I've genuinely liked. They seem to fall into certain types:

1. The bitter, destructive, hate-filled ones, who just want to smash things up and provoke others. Frankie Boyle is a good example of this type. Though they hide behind a mask of moral superiority, they're often the nastiest, cruelest people you'll ever meet.

2. The narcissistic, attention-seeking, show off type. You know, the ones who think they're rebels fighting the system (they ARE the system!...it's the patriotic conservatives who are the counter-culture). Anyone who went to university has met this sort. Rick in The Young Ones is a good send up of the type. Russell Brand is another example.

3. The naive, silly, weak-minded, easily led type. Usually, they've come under the influence of some charismatic, forceful personality (a number 2 type) who's spotted their weakness.

4. The ones in search of a substitute for religion. For this type, left-wing politics is more a cult, something they can lose themselves in, something that gives their life meaning and purpose.

Obviously not all left-wing people fall into one of those groups, but the ones I respect tend to be moderate and skeptical and able to think for themselves. I'm equally hostile to the free market Thatcherite monsters btw. Any form of extremism or black and white thinking rings alarm bells. The only people I truly respect are sensible, moderate, compassionate (I mean genuinely compassionate, not just striking a pose) and independent-minded.

I think generally there's some truth in it.
I've got a lot more left wing as I've got older though. I think the poverty in the UK is absolutely off the scale now and this has driven this.

@Dappy777 I think you can assign those categories (or very similar ones) to people that strongly identify as either Left or Right. They're such poor labels to divide politics between. Anyone that self-identifies under either of those labels is generally antagonistic to anyone that doesn't share every single belief they do.

The reality is that politics is complicated, and most good policy portfolios borrow from all sides and traditions of UK politics to varying degrees and broadly sit somewhere in the centre ground.

I've got more left wing, I see just how unfair the country is

Not in my case. More left wing than ever at 60. My dad when he died in his 90s also was left wing still.
30 isn’t getting older anyway. Maybe you are falling into the group of young people being seduced by the far right with misinformation?

Same. More of a leftie now than ever.

Also, apparently the trend of becoming more conservative as you age is shifting - simply because millennials don't have the same assets to protect.

Left and right wing are about philosophy, not policy.

They're about ideology. But that doesn't affect what I've written.

Well this is largely nonsense.
What categories would you say for the right?
Selfish and rich, wanting more and not to share?
Selfish and not rich, assuming they’ll get there by some miracle?
Just hating everyone not like themselves?

Works both ways. Stupid generalisations are stupid. And your understanding of Conservatism as a political perspective is flawed. Plus your view of Orwell.

You spoke about policy portfolios coming from one side or the other. Not really such a thing.

Your history teacher might have been speaking for himself. He shouldn’t have said that was how it was for others though, because it’s nonsense. I’m more than happy to pay my share to the welfare state as I recognise it makes everyone’s life better to live in a society where people aren’t in poverty and where health, education etc work properly.

I find as I age that I’m a lot less tolerant of anyone who voted conservative. Reform or Brexit.

So a policy of nationalising the railways has neither a Left nor Right wing ideological background? It just appears out of the void.

I am very middle ground. Always have been, envisage always will be.
Given the Tories have swung massively to the right and Labour now occupy the middle ground, I would align myself more with Labour.

I have always been for a hand up not a hand out and having to work. I don't like the idea of endless benefits for all without some form of contribution back into society.