In several countries across Europe, ‘pensioners parties’ sit in parliament expressly to reflect the interests of older voters. The most successful is perhaps Slovenia, where the Democratic Party of Pensioners had a parliamentary presence from 1992 to 2022, and often made up part of the governing coalition. In the UK, attempts to create pensioners parties have faltered. Now, in a desperate grasp for survival, the Conservatives are attempting to become one.
Rishi Sunak has kicked off the first full week of the campaign with a policy to further entrench the Tory support of better-off older people. Where once the triple lock was enough, now he has unveiled the ‘Triple Lock Plus’. This maintains the same inflation-busting guaranteed increases but with an added perk – the personal tax threshold will rise for pensioners too, keeping those gains out of the hands of the HMRC. Those who work for their money won’t be so lucky.
In successful elections, you rely on your core vote and take the fight outwards to those who waver
It’s a pretty craven bit of electioneering. Even though the Tories have largely abandoned working-age voters, and vice versa, cuts to National Insurance went down badly with those too old to work. Sunak himself recently got a broadside on daytime TV for ‘hating’ pensioners – while Labour started their campaign with full-page newspaper ads reassuring older voters. The Tory party is worried that without some sweetener, and one which Labour would be reluctant to match, the grey vote might peel away from them.
This policy, like so much of the campaign so far, seems hurried and ill-thought-through. The funding shortfall is said to be matched by tackling tax avoidance. It’s an odd statement, which both suggests a bit of a fiscal black hole and implies that for 14 years the Tories have been leaving money on the table by not cracking down. For a party often accused of being in cahoots with the rich, it’s exposing an open flank. More than that, the approach would add further complexity to the tax system, something that governments are generally warned against.
Above all that is the unfairness of the policy. The triple lock has already fuelled intergenerational disparities. Now the average pensioner has more disposable income than the average worker. This move would only exacerbate this, with by the end of the decade pensioners being taken out of tax that low earners would still have to pay. Even among the old, the impact will disproportionately favour two-pensioner households who tend to be better off and more secure. Rather than say, raising pension credits, this is a universal bung which moves money away from workers towards richer retirees.
It also speaks of the political peril the Tories believe that they are in. The main winners of the last fourteen years have been richer pensioners. These cohorts have enjoyed the fruits of rising house prices combined with increasing pensions. Many will also have defined benefit pensions from work, which have protected them from inflation. They’ve benefitted Covid too, as significant supporters of Brexit and some of the Tories’ other cultural touchstones. The Covid rules were also framed around the needs of older people – the most vulnerable group. The reason why the over-60s are the only demographic still supporting the Tories is partly because they have fared so well under them.
That the Conservatives feel the need to shore up the pensioner vote shows how close to wipeout the party feels. The party should barely have to try to win over richer pensioners, but instead, it has spent the first few days of the campaign focused on them. This feels like a party in panic, unable to rely on the votes of anyone, even its most obvious supporters. The fight seems to be happening deep in Tory territory, a sign of the woe the party is in.
Some of this is about material policies. The rich-retired may have done well personally out of Tory policies recently, but they also feel cuts to public services. Many will have been affected by the long NHS waiting lists or know people who have. They are also bothered by potholes and general signs of decline. The failure to have a credible plan for social care also worries them – with many caring for parents as well as worrying about their own future needs. Lots, too, will be sympathetic to the way house prices and other issues have left their children disappointed with this government.
There are long-term issues to being a party dependent on one demographic, too. The Conservatives have seen their support collapse among younger voters. In the 2010 election, 30 per cent of 18-24s backed the Tories, while the latest polls show the Conservatives on around just 10 per cent with this age bracket. The campaign so far has shown that the Tories are dodging solving this question. Instead, they are pitching more and more towards pensioners, hoping that demographic weight and differential turnout are enough to give them a respectable outcome in July.
It is not so much that policies favourable to pensioners are unpopular elsewhere. Despite its intergenerational impacts, the triple lock enjoys broad support. Voters who agree with spending public money don’t mind spending it on the retired too. But normally that comes as part of a broader slate. So far, the Tories are offering almost nothing, either in terms of policy or attitudes, as a direct appeal to those of working age. Just a few days into the campaign they are already focused entirely on their base.
This doesn’t bode well for the party. In successful elections, you rely on your core vote and take the fight outwards to those who waver. Becoming Europe’s largest pensioner party might save the Tories in a few key seats, but bad policy bribes for the people who should be its surest supporters speak of a political organisation in very ill health.