Many Corbyn voters are frustrated capitalists – Labour isn’t their home

Young and middle-aged aspire to a conservative lifestyle, but feel the game is rigged against them

If David Cameron made one fatal mistake in politics, it was to underestimate the extent of discontent. The Brexiteers understood this latent rage, and that is why their campaign to smash the status quo triumphed so spectacularly. For a while, Theresa May grasped it too: her big idea was to harness anti-establishment sentiment to engineer a realignment of politics. It seemed as if she may have stumbled upon a golden opportunity to forge a new centre-right approach fusing national self-government, a migration policy more in tune with the public mood and a reformed capitalism.

Yet she failed miserably, intellectually as well as practically: she attacked swathes of her own base – libertarians, centre-right internationalists, City types – without offering anybody else anything other than Brexit and an implausibly tough reduction in immigration. There was no coherent vision, no grand plan, no case for a conservative society (reformed or otherwise) and no defence of a smaller government with a balanced budget. The campaign centred on her personality, and the need for stability: when subjected to scrutiny, the electorate decided that the message and messenger were sorely lacking. There was too much cultural positioning, and not enough economics.

She betrayed the Tory heartlands, who couldn’t understand why she was trying to put workers on boards or seeking to cap energy prices, while being easily out-competed on the Left by Labour’s embrace of Venezuelanstyle policies. The few noticeable “retail offerings” – such as grammar schools – were too narrow.

Mrs May failed even to capitalise on her strongest card: she didn’t attempt to make any kind of positive case for leaving the EU. Her argument was purely legalistic: she would lead us out of the EU because that was the outcome of the referendum, rather than because she had become convinced of the case for doing so. At every stage, she presented Brexit as a difficult, complex task, a cross to bear even, rather than as an incredibly exciting journey to rebuild Britain: this failed to enthuse Leavers while further alienating Remainers.

As far as many voters in their twenties, thirties and forties were concerned, there was little in it for them: no hope of cheaper housing, no relief from taxation, nothing to reduce the cost of living, no improvements to healthcare, and certainly no progress on the catastrophic state of their pensions. They didn’t like Mrs May’s tone and wondered why cuts were still necessary given that nobody was making the case for living within the Government’s means any more. As to social care, they thought they saw a Government prepared to attack their own parents and grandparents, while not doing anything to help the young.

It was Jeremy Corbyn who reaped the angry vote: he had something for almost everybody, all paid for by the magic money tree. May thought that the anti-establishment vote would be hers; but it turned out that voters tend to flock to those with a clear, passionate message, even when like Corbyn they would ruin the nation. The Labour leader cleverly accepted that we are going to leave the EU, allowing 24 per cent of Brexiteers to back him, while simultaneously encouraging Remainers to believe that the process under Labour would be “softer”. Even Mrs May’s 12-point increase among CD2E (working-class) voters was a disappointment; and in any case it was cancelled out by an identical and deeply worrying 12-point Labour increase among ABC1S (the middle class).

Yet it would be preposterously premature to give up on the Tories. Young and middle-aged voters aspire to an economically conservative lifestyle, far more so than 20 years ago: they want to be owner-occupiers, to have financial assets, to work for themselves and to seize control of their destiny. But they also increasingly feel, with good reason, that the game is rigged against them, and that hard work is no longer enough to succeed. Their savings aren’t rewarded, thanks to ultra-low interest rates that have bolstered the asset-rich. The older generations were lucky: they were offered final salary pensions and were able to buy property when it was cheap.

For the first time this election, areas where house prices rose the most swung more heavily to Labour; in the past, when the homeownership rate was higher, an increase in property wealth would have helped the Tories.

For millions of voters, support for Corbyn is best seen as a cry for help, not a conversion to egalitarianism or a rejection of materialism; they want reform, not revolution. In 1987, when the Tory manifesto was an upbeat paean to the ownership society, Labour’s lead among 18 to 24-year-olds was just two points; 30 years later, Labour trashed the Tories by 35 points, according to Ipsos Mori.

The Tories must accept the depth of the problem, laid bare in a devastating report by the Resolution Foundation. Wealth accumulation is becoming too difficult: at age 30, those born in 1981-1985 could boast only half the net wealth of those born just five years earlier at the same age. There has been regression for all cohorts born since 1955: a typical adult born in 1956-60 was worth 7 per cent less at age 55 than one born five years earlier. By contrast, those born in 1946-50 had 20 per cent more wealth at age 65 than the cohort five years before them.

The primary driver has been home ownership: those born in the 1940s enjoyed higher levels of home ownership at each age than any subsequent generation, and the overall rate has been collapsing since 2004. As to pensions, those with the best deal were born before 1966.

The answer must be to focus on rebuilding an asset-owning society: Britain needs a massive, private-sector driven housebuilding programme to ensure that at least 1 million extra households become homeowners; and auto-enrolment needs to be dramatically extended to build a new savings culture.

Many Corbyn voters are actually frustrated capitalists. The Momentum-controlled Labour Party, for which the mass ownership of wealth is anathema, is not their natural home. The country is crying out for radical conservative solutions. The tragedy is that the Tory party is in no fit state to deliver them.