which also goes some way to explaining while the abandonment of the right by the young is more extreme in the Uk than elsewhere (even it is a broad global trend).
the right-wing gerontocracy may have gone too far & taken too much?
@ChrisMayLA6 More seriously, this is why the Tories, just like their GOP friends in the US, want to end fair elections.
The politics of the 80s, the focus on benefiting homeowners and the already wealthy, put the Tories (and the mainstream right in every country that did the same) in a quandary: to win in the present, they had to maximise support amongst ageing voters; to win in the future, they had to win over younger voters enough to turn 'never Tories' into voters who could turn Tory further down the line.
And the more they chose the former, the less likely it became that younger voters would ever become Tory as they approached middle age. They've alienated so many voters that by the middle of this century, the party could cease to exist.
The only tool left to them is to retain power illegitimately. If hardly anyone born after the mid-80s is ever going to vote for them, then it's voting that has to go (or be so distorted as to lose all meaning).
This is why it seems absurd to me when people say, 'if the Tories win maybe there'll be a better Labour next time', 'if Trump wins maybe there'll be a better Dem candidate next time'. If the right wins there isn't going to be a next time, not in any meaningful sense. The GOP have already made this abundantly clear. The Tories aren't quite as far along the road, but they can move faster because there are no constitutional obstacles to hold them back.
People become so used to democracy that they don't realise how bloody fragile it is.
yes I agree... people don't realise (although the penny might be starting to drop) that we need to defend democracy itself, not just social democracy as a position
@ChrisMayLA6@RolloTreadway pessimism is warranted. But it isn’t just about voter turnout. What I don’t understand is why all the other political parties aren’t running voter registration campaigns to get folk onto the Register in the first place. Millions are disappearing off the Register, young people aren’t registering in the first place and there’s hardly a cheep from anyone.
@RolloTreadway@ChrisMayLA6
It's amazing how little the 1980s have inoculated us against Tories. After experiencing that, AFAIC they have no chance, and that's before all the mainstream neo fascist stuff.
But here they are. Democracy is indeed fragile, but they are not.