Tory hopeful assaulted on campaign trail
It’s hardly a surprise that younger voters lean Left when they’ve never heard the case for Conservatism
A prospective Tory councillor blamed the “toxic” atmosphere of social media after being punched and called a “b----” by an assailant who attacked her from behind. Carla Hales, a music teacher due to stand in Colchester next month, feared she had been stabbed while posing for a selfie at Bourne Mill nature reserve. Her attacker fled, leaving her alone and in pain. She said social media trolls were too often committing abuse unchallenged and that this could fester into violence.
POLICE are investigating a “politically motivated assault” against a Tory council candidate who had been canvassing, as she warned that social media was whipping up anger.
Carla Hales, a music teacher due to stand in Colchester next month, was punched three times in the side by an assailant who yelled “Tory b----” as he rushed her from behind.
The first-time candidate initially feared that she had been stabbed. She had been taking a selfie at the Bourne Mill nature reserve.
Her attacker fled, leaving Mrs Hales alone and in pain. She then went to hospital for treatment.
She was given an X-ray by medics and confirmed yesterday that there was “nothing broken but some sore ribs and a slightly bruised ego”.
The unprovoked assault on Wednesday afternoon has stoked fear that the “toxicity” of Westminster politics is spilling on to the doorstep.
Speaking from her home last night, Mrs Hales claimed that social media trolls were too often being allowed to commit abuse unchallenged and that this could fester into violence.
She told The Daily Telegraph that local candidates had encountered a surprising amount of aggression on the doorstep. She said: “I think it was the leaflets that I was carrying [that singled me out], I was out down by the lake and I was going to do a selfie and I think that is what he saw.
“I have had everything from ‘oh wow, you’re brave’ to ‘you’re all useless, I’m not talking to you’, but I have tried hard to do a positive campaign and not criticise other people.
“I think the current debate has given rise to this sort of atmosphere.
“There was a local Labour candidate sworn at and abused on Facebook, and people said ‘it’s only words’, but of course words then lead to actions.”
Condemnation of the episode quickly poured in from across the political spectrum, and Mrs Hales was given a bouquet of flowers by the council’s Labour group. Priti Patel, the MP for nearby Witham, said: “Our members and activists are the heart and soul of the Conservative Party. The national party must get behind our members to stand up and speak out against such politically motivated violence.”
Police were yesterday conducting door-to-door inquiries close to the scene of the attack, at a corner of Bourne Road known to be frequented by drug addicts. No one has yet been arrested.
Darius Laws, the local Tory leader, said Colchester was typically a friendly place for politicians, but had soured in recent times. He said: “It was a politically motivated assault. She was on her own. She is a woman. She’s a first-time candidate.
“We desperately need to encourage younger people and more women into politics. She’s made the point that people need to think about their language on social media.
“The toxicity is not just coming from those who voted to leave the EU, it is in all quarters. People are feeling disenfranchised by the Westminster scene and are bitterly disappointed.”
Mrs Hales vowed to continue her campaigning after a few days of rest, but said she will take her husband with her in future.
♦the election watchdog has said that Theresa May risks undermining faith in politics if the European elections go ahead. Sir John Holmes, the chairman of the Electoral Commission, told The Times it was “unprecedented in a mature democracy” for a country to elect candidates to roles they may never fill.
It’s rare, nowadays, to come across a Conservative who isn’t trying to be the next leader of the party. Theresa May has been an inspiration, insofar as most of her MPS think they could do a better job. So a mass audition has started, with speeches outlining grand visions for the future. Almost every time, we hear how the party’s biggest problem is winning back young voters. But how? This is where the ideas run out. It’s a bit of a problem.
For most of the past 15 years, the Tories have been anxiously trying to look slick, modern and vigorous – only to see a pensioner, Jeremy Corbyn, waltz off with the youth vote.
The over-60s are four times as likely to vote Conservative as the under-25s. Nothing the Tories do seems to work. Whether it’s posing as eco-crusaders or promising to review tuition fees, attempts to lure the young have left Conservatives looking panicked and insincere. Every attempted remedy for the party’s youth problem serves to make it worse.
The latest idea is to portray the young as victims of the old: the so-called “intergenerational fairness” agenda. This usually means repeating the (untrue) line that this young
generation are the first to be worsepaid than their parents were at the same age. So the solution is to bring about some “intergenerational fairness” by taxing the bejesus out of the oldies.
Philip Hammond, the Chancellor, was at it again this week: the population is ageing, he said, which will be very expensive. So state spending will have to rise – and taxes along with it. Conservatives who grumble at his Milibandism are told to look at those opinion polls: young people nowadays like big government.
To talk about an “ageing population” is a bleak way of saying that people are far healthier and living longer: perhaps the biggest success of our age; yet the Tories prefer to see this as a looming disaster.
How, they ask, will the NHS cope? How much higher will taxes have to rise to cope with this looming lump of humanity? The general Conservative gloom can be summed up in a sentence: “Oh my God, we’re all going to live.”
But look closely, and it emerges that the idea of a generational war is a myth. It’s not just that young people have similar concerns to older ones, but the bond between the generations is closer than ever.
The House of Lords report on Tackling Intergenerational Unfairness, published yesterday, spelled some of this out. Grandparents provide childcare to two-in-five families; for working mothers, it’s almost three-infour. One of the many ways in which the old lift the burden on the young. The value of the childcare alone (not that it would ever show up on Mr Hammond’s spreadsheets) is about £7 billion.
The bribes to older voters, meanwhile – the free TV license, the free transport – are needless and insulting because they assume pensioners vote for whoever offers the biggest freebies.
In fact, the main concern of the old is to make things better for their families. A quarter of new homes are bought with parental assistance: the average donation is £18,000. Yes, housing is a major problem. But the idea of the young generally blaming the old for this (or anything else) is nonsense.
But housing is the main concern of young voters, and here the Tories have made things worse. The huge stamp duty hikes (designed to copy Ed Miliband’s idea of a mansion tax) have created a massive disincentive to move home, so people are deterred from selling larger properties when children move out.
After nine years in power, it’s hard for the Conservatives to blame anyone else for the dismal progress on homebuilding. Or rock-bottom interest rates that sent asset prices soaring, and so disfigured the housing market in the first place. George Osborne’s help-to-buy bribe served to ramp up house prices further still.
It’s true that the old are taxed a bit less than the young: over-65s don’t pay national insurance. But rather than clobber them, why not level the playing field by cutting taxes for everyone else?
The Centre for Policy Studies (on whose board I sit) has looked into how much language matters. Young people tend to have a low opinion of “capitalism”, associating it with words like greedy, selfish, corrupt, divisive etc. When asked about tax cuts, they are unmoved. But when asked what the Government could do to help them, the top answers were cheaper housing and “keep down the cost of living”. Time was when Tories knew how to do this.
The trickier question is whether the Tories look halfway competent, and whether they are able to explain their purpose – other than to keep the other guys out of power. For a generation, the party has been addicted to negative campaigning – much of it using historical examples.
They would talk about the socialism of the Seventies or the IRA of the Eighties. This might be effective to those of us brought up in the Cold War, who will tend to see in Corbynism the return of a destructive ideology. But those with fewer memories of the bad old days will not. None of this is very hard to fathom.
Now and again, Tories tell each other that the young are enjoying the fruits of the free market more than any previous generation: cheap flights, multiple television channels, Deliveroo, taxis (and pizzas) that can be summoned by mobile phone. But why would the young associate any of this with conservatism, if no one has ever made the link? Since the referendum, the party has been unable to talk about anything other than Brexit.
Young voters, like all voters, think of the problems they face – housing chief among them. They ask what Tories are doing about housing, or anything else. And they see the answer: the Tories are squabbling. Unable to agree on Brexit, let alone any other issue. Clinging on to a bad leader because they can’t bring themselves to choose a new one.
And this is the real Tory youth problem. It’s not that the young are wedded to socialism, it’s that they have never really heard the case for conservatism. Even now, it’s not too late for someone to make it.