There is nothing inevitable about Labour’s unpopularity with older voters, writes James Morris 

When I started doing research for the Labour party in 2003, every focus group was with C1C2 25-55-year-old swing voters. Until, one day in late 2004, my manager asked me to do something different.

Way above my head a fight was taking place about who Labour should target at the coming election. One side thought Labour had slid badly with older voters, particularly older working-class voters, and needed to do something about it. The other side thought the answer was to double down on ‘soccer moms’ [sic]. Working for the party’s advertising agency, and unaware of this top-table row, I was deputised to go and run a set of focus groups with older voters and find out where Labour stood.

In front rooms in London’s commuter belt and the Midlands, older people told me they felt Labour ignored them, patronised them, dismissed their concerns, had nothing to offer. They had voted Labour before but could not stomach Tony Blair (and his wife, who they were bizarrely focused on).

The results were so bad that the party immediately gave up trying to win them back. ‘Soccer moms’ it was.

The problem with older voters was quietly forgotten, emerging briefly when Gordon Brown ran into Mrs Duffy, before slipping beneath the waves again.

In 2015, our data shows that Labour lost 55-65s by 10 points, and over-65s by 31 points. It won everyone else. Ipsos MORI’s data is less stark, with the two parties roughly tied among middle-aged voters. But it also found a swing from the Conservatives to Labour in every age group except the over-65s. To put it another way, if Labour had stemmed its losses among older voters, we would now be talking about prime minister Miliband not comrade Corbyn.

This problem is only going to get more important as the population ages, particularly given the higher turnout rates of older voters: 78 per cent of over-65s voters voted, compared to 43 per cent of 18-24s.

Among people over 65, the problem is not just that Labour came so far behind the Tories. The party is not even under consideration. Just seven per cent said Labour was their second choice.

The first step to winning older voters back is to sort the fundamentals out, not developing a tailored policy offer. As we saw in 2015, firing policies at specific voter groups does not achieve much if they do not have faith in you to deliver them. Moreover, the policy issues older voters do care about are not necessarily ‘old people’s issues’. Between 1992 and 1997, Labour turned a 14-point deficit among the over-65s into a five-point lead with barely a policy that was uniquely relevant to older people. Labour can win older voters back through the kind of brand changes that will appeal broadly.

But, to make deeper inroads into the older vote, there are specific changes needed. Part of this is about understanding how diverse this group of voters is. After housing costs, median pensioner incomes are now higher than non-pensioner incomes. Poverty is higher among people of working age than among pensioners.

However, despite this diversity, there are some changes that have very broad appeal. These are as much about tone and the values we emphasise as about policy.

Older voters are particularly hungry for security. Our default is to present everything as a radical change. Whatever policy we have, we position it as transformational. This is a problem across the board, but particularly for older voters. By 82 points to 12, older voters prefer change that is ‘sensible and concrete’ over change that is about ‘big vision’ and is ‘radical’. The only people who have positive associations with the word ‘radical’ are leftwing activists.

Older voters are also more likely to believe that hard work pays in Britain. To appeal to them, Labour’s narrative needs to reflect values of personal responsibility and contribution as much as social justice and a recognition of the power of context in shaping life chances.

Concerns about security bleed into issues around identity and immigration. Older voters are more likely to feel besieged by the rapid changes happening in society. Labour does very little to appear sympathetic or even comprehending of these concerns. At the last election 72 per cent of over-65s were seriously concerned about Labour’s approach to immigration. Younger people favour a more patriotic Labour party over a more internationalist one by 12 points; for over-55s the margin is 42 points. More than half were seriously concerned that Labour puts others before the interests of England. The problem with the ‘Controls on immigration’ mug was that it was unbelievable, not offensive.

This is not a problem Ed Miliband created. Aside from a short period in the run-up to the 2005 election, Labour’s tone has been dismissive of concerns about English identity and immigration. To the economically liberal right, concerns appeared luddite; to the socially liberal left, they appeared racist. This pincer movement has squeezed out empathetic voices. That has to change. There is no route to power for uber-liberal dislocated politics.

Alongside these tonal changes, there are also important policy issues that the party has to grapple with. Pension policy is part of it – it certainly will be a struggle if the Tories establish clear dividing lines on the rate of pension payments – but three other issues are potentially of similar importance: social care, the transition to retirement and inheritance tax.

I first ran in to the politics of inheritance tax in the run-up to the 2007 budget. Gordon Brown was looking for a rabbit to yank from a hat, and we had devoted many focus groups to testing two ideas: the abolition of inheritance tax for all but the largest estates and a reduction in the basic rate of income tax. Fellow pollster Deborah Mattinson and I sat down to watch the budget, expecting the former. Instead we got the latter. The budget flopped and a few months later it was George Osborne who announced an inheritance tax cut, setting in train the poll shifts that saw the cancellation of the snap election.

By the time Labour takes office, inheritance tax will effectively have ended for many families. Opposing that change before it happens is one thing; promising to reverse it would be quite another.

The challenge is that the left is minded to see increased wealth through rising house prices as ill-gotten gains, ripe for taxation. Unfortunately, no one else sees it like that. People see the fact that a parent owns their own home as a function of hard work and good luck. Their desire to pass wealth on is seen as being a good parent, not a selfish individual. Young people are not going to be motivated to vote Labour on the back of threats to their parents’ nest eggs.

Labour does need to deal with inequality, including inequality of wealth. But it is dangerous to do that by targeting wealth at the point of death. Any extension of inheritance tax would have to be presented as a hard choice, made in sorrow to share the burden more fairly; not as a moral good in and of itself. A safer route would be to pursue equality by strengthening the ladders of opportunity for younger people, policy on private rents, action to boost housing supply, and so on.

One place where an asset tax might be viable is social care. This is not just a concern for people who rely on council services to wash, dress and eat. It is a growing concern for people across the income scale. Some form of insurance-style system may well be robust enough to get through the inevitable ‘death tax’ attacks.

The third big issue reflects the fundamental change in the nature of retirement. It used to be that workers would, one day, stop working. Today that is less common. More and more people transition to retirement through a series of steps: fewer hours, fewer days, a less demanding job. At the same time they often take on other responsibilities: caring for grandkids, volunteering. We do not really have a policy framework to support that kind of transition and it needs developing.

As Labour executes these kinds of change, it is important they are presented in the right way. ‘We’ve listened and we’ve changed’ is a terrible message. You might as well say, ‘I’m only doing this to please you, I don’t really care’. No politician should ever present a policy as a result of ‘listening’ or electoral need. They need to show they believe in it.

There is no reason why Labour should struggle with older voters. The party can be proud of the flag, reassuring on change and have a policy offer that resonates with this group. In the past, Labour has managed to shift voters by focusing on their needs – most notably in the way it improved its position with women voters running in to 1997. Now it must do the same, but for the over-60s.

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James Morris is partner at Greenberg Quinlan Rosner

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Photo: Catherine Smith