8 min read06 October
The Tories will need to win back younger voters if they are ever going to govern again. Zoe Crowther finds the party is staking it all on being seen as the best chance they have to get a good job and home
At the last general election, the median age of a Conservative voter had risen to 63. Of those under 30 who cast a vote in 2024, barely eight per cent did so for the Tories.
Campaigning for the Tory leadership in the wake of that crushing defeat, Mel Stride described the age profile of the party’s voters as “completely untenable”. Only “deep, hard work over a sustained period of time” could turn it around, he said.
More than two years later, Stride is out of his job as shadow chancellor and those close to leader Kemi Badenoch are resisting pressure for headline-grabbing policies designed to appeal specifically to younger voters.
The Conservatives have not given up on younger voters completely. In February, the party launched its ‘New Deal for Young People’, which included scrapping real interest rates on Plan 2 student loans, creating 100,000 more apprenticeships for 18- to 21-year-olds, and introducing a £5,000 First Job Bonus, which would allow young people to keep the first £5,000 of National Insurance they would have paid.
The party has also promised to abolish Stamp Duty Land Tax on primary residences for UK residents, a policy that would help younger voters get on and move up the property ladder.
But asked whether there is a further policy push for the younger generation, insiders say the priority is to restore the party’s reputation for economic competence more generally.
The party is said to be keen to move away from a politics-by-focus-group approach, where every policy is broken down according to how it might appeal to a particular demographic.
Tory sources say there is no specific person or team working on youth policy in the Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ), or for any other demographic group. Instead, they argue the party should return to fundamental Conservative principles: lowering the tax burden, reforming welfare so that work pays, promoting aspirational conservatism and pursuing deregulation, including in housing. The thinking is that these policies will naturally appeal to working professionals under 45, a revealingly broad definition of what the party now considers its potential ‘young’ electorate.
There will, in any case, only be handful of key policies unveiled at this year’s conference – compared to dozens at last year’s. At least one of these is expected to centre on ‘aspirational conservatism’.
Conservative MP for Windsor Jack Rankin, who also serves as Badenoch’s parliamentary private secretary, says: “One thing that is quite nice about the party at the minute is we are not overly focused on cynical retail politics that comes out of focus groups to attract a particular crowd.
“We’ve had time to think about where we went wrong and what we want to do, and the broad consensus is that where we went wrong in government is where we weren’t true to our authentic principles, so we’re trying to be a serious party.
“We can’t out-populist Reform. We’re not going to outspend Labour. But with priorities like fiscal discipline and defence, that’s exactly what the country needs right now. There’s a USP for us; it’s what we bloody believe, and it’s authentically ours and unites us.”
Rankin, who is 34, says that to win back working-age voters they will “have to look like a new party”.
“Kemi’s doing quite a good job on that, that’s part of why you’ve seen some new faces being promoted, but clearly that is a process over a period of months and years.”
The economic unit in CCHQ has been tasked with making the Conservatives the party the public trusts most on the economy. With the party currently on around 20 per cent in the polls, some hope it can rise to 25 within the next year through sustained messaging on fiscal responsibility.
The new shadow chancellor, Andrew Griffith, is widely seen as more bullish on business deregulation, arguing that removing red tape and lowering taxes on businesses could make it easier to employ young people, creating more opportunities as they enter and progress through the labour market.
James Cowling, founder of the Next Gen Tories grassroots group, believes the key question for the party now is whether it pursues fiscal policies that fuel further growth or prioritises policies likely to be more popular with its traditional, older base, such as scrapping inheritance tax.
“I think they’ll land somewhere between the two,” he tells The House.
He hopes the party is having conversations about relative marginal rates of tax for high earners, including the taper of the personal allowance: “It’s two bites of the cherry. It is very growth-driving, and it is aimed at people in their 30s, 40s, or maybe 50s who earn reasonable amounts of money, so could be target voters.”
Rankin agrees that more could be done to reduce marginal rates of tax, which would “make sense to a younger crowd”. He adds that there will be “a real push” in the Conservative Party about being tough on in-work welfare, including housing benefit and social homes.
Housing and planning could be another major part of the Conservatives’ attempt to broaden their appeal. The House understands the party is set to announce further policies on planning regulations, designed in part to appeal to people struggling to get on the housing ladder.
Rankin says of the current planning regulation landscape: “It’s individually justifiable, but collectively intolerable.
“We’re not going to outcompete Polanski and Farage on TikTok”
“We’re going to have to have a bit of a bonfire of that kind of stuff, and there will be contentious elements to that… Social, affordable housing just makes everything unviable in central London at the minute. If you want stuff to be built in central London, you’re going to have to waive a degree of that. And we have to think about the fire safety regulations after Grenfell.”
Some in the party believe it failed to apply a more ‘conservative’ approach while in government, to pursue urban densification by building more homes while ensuring they are attractive and well-designed.
Party insiders suggest new shadow housing, communities and local government secretary Katie Lam is motivated to take this agenda forward, with announcements on planning expected at the party conference.
“It’s so well-known how you would do sensible Tory housing policy, but they’ve just never had the courage to do it,” Cowling says.
For some advocating for a more young person-orientated approach, abolishing the pensions triple lock would be another courageous step for the party to take. However, while CCHQ insiders acknowledge that the triple lock is unsustainable, the party lost no time in issuing an attack ad following Andy Burnham’s announcement last week that it would be modified in the future. Economists may disapprove but the politics are unarguable given its supporters’ age profile.
The Tories are, however, making some effort to rebuild their grassroots youth operation. Fred Lynam, the Conservative Party’s youth engagement co-ordinator, says Badenoch takes the Young Conservatives group more seriously than previous leaderships did. He has been working to professionalise the organisation over the past year.
“It was quite despairing to look round and see a youth wing that’s 120 years old, that was lacking structure, was lacking organisation.”
This year’s conference will see a 50 per cent increase in Young Conservatives attending, and the group is also due to hold its first election for a chair in 30 years.
“I’m under no illusion that building up the YCs is going to change the 18 to 25 vote share overnight,” Lynam says, but adds that after visiting Sweden and seeing the organisation of the Conservative sister party’s youth wing there, he is encouraged by what might be possible.
“We got a large proportion of the youth vote in the Cameron years,” he says. “The opportunity is there, and I think we’re probably very well-placed to do it with Kemi.”
Meanwhile, Rankin and a handful of other Tory MPs are determined to keep attending university campus Conservative events whenever invited, rather than “cede the ground” to political opponents.
Even where a university Conservative association has only a dozen young members, Rankin argues, those people could become the activists and organisers of the future. “We need that pipeline to come through.”
There are also discussions within Badenoch’s team about launching a TikTok account for her, as she currently lags behind other party leaders in using the platform.
But Rankin cautions that focusing too much on the social media airwaves could prove to be a “futile waste of our time”, adding: “We’re not going to outcompete Polanski and Farage on TikTok.”
The Conservatives are not attempting to find a ‘silver bullet’ policy or comms approach that will boost the party’s popularity with the youth. For now, they believe that the route back to younger voters is not through a youth strategy at all, but about rebuilding the proposition that once carried voters from youth into middle age.
