The Labour Humanist

It was the Grey Vote that killed the November election

The Conservative surge in the opinion polls that killed off the prospects of a November election was built upon a large swing away from Labour amongst older voters. The Grey Vote - which accounts for at least one in four voters if you count just the 65+, or over 40% of turnout if you count in all voters aged 55+ - has proved the be the most volatile age-group in the electorate.

Older voters swung from Labour to Conservative in dramatic numbers in the key polls during party conference season. Here's the evidence. In the ICM/News of the World poll of voters in marginal seats the Conservatives had opened up a decisive 56%-32% lead over Labour amongst voters aged 65+ and were ahead 47%-33% amongst voters aged 55-64. In the same poll Labour led the Conservatives 41%-30% amongst younger voters aged 18-24. But doing well amongst younger voters amounts to very little to any party struggling with the Grey Vote, because if its sheer size, and critically, the much higher voting turnout amongst older voters. In this poll a pathetic 16% of young voters said they were "certain to vote" compared 72% of voters aged 65. It's a clear political calculus that any party who seeks power needs to be polling strongly amongst large groups of voters who actually bother to vote. Doing well with the apathetic counts for very little. Here's some ICM numbers:

Certain to vote:
18-24     16%
25-34     37%
35-44     51%
45-54     52%
55-64     69%
65+        72%

Voting Intention
            Lab    Con    LD

18-24    41%    30%    29%
25-34    46%    45%     8%
35-44    45%    41%     6%
45-54    34%    43%    11%
55-64    33%    47%    13%
65+       32%    56%     9%

Source: ICM for the News of the World. Published October 7 2007

With all the usual caveats about the fallibility of polls, and not comparing panels of identical voters, look at two other national Yougov polls to show the large swing amongst older voters. The Yougov polls for Channel Four News over the last two weeks (here and here showed a nine point lead for Labour with voters aged 55+ turn a week later into a Conservative lead of four points. Compared to the 35-54 age bracket where Labour's lead only dropped from 11% to 9% over the same period. The Grey Vote appears highly volatile compared to other age groups.

The Grey Vote may not be on the radar screen of our youth-obsessed media, but there are compelling reasons why older voters should be a priority segment for Labour's strategic campaign planning. The Party has lost ground since 2005 amongst this key sub-section of voters.

There are a range of issues where Labour has a good story to tell, but needs to do much more to improve the quality of life for older voters. Labour's investment in the NHS has transformed both the quality of our local health services and dramatically reduced waiting times for operations. But, there are too many reports around of poorer standards in services for older people. Likewise, long term care is far from being a settled issue, too many voters feel the funding arrangements are unfair and too many older people suffer abuse and neglect in care homes, and yes, Inheritance Tax, needs to be looked at. As Neasa MacErlean points out in yesterday's Observer, there are real issues of perceived injustice within the current system.

The War on Halloween!

Forget the phoney War on Christmas, we now have the War on Halloween!:

"A primary school is considering plans to abandon its Halloween celebration in case it offends religious parents.

Teachers want to rename the party planned for the night of October 31 as an "Autumn Festival".

But parents criticised the proposed move as "another example of political correctness gone mad".

Pupils at Tonna Primary School in Neath, South Wales, were looking forward their Halloween disco. But they were left disappointed after staff told parents that the Halloween disco "might offend". One mother said: "It's unbelievable that they should mess around with a night of fun for the kids who have been looking forward to it. I think it's political correctness gone mad again."

Is it me, or is the War on Christmas getting earlier every year?

Is it me, or does the (phoney) War on Christmas start earlier and earlier with each year that passes? Local supermarkets are already stocking the shelves with Christmas items, but how long before the attacks on the great British Christmas begins? How long before archbishops and the popular press start rolling out the myths of PC kill joys banning Christmas in favour of something called Winterval or Luminos?

The "story" rolled out on an annual basis is that mysterious "politically correct" officials will advance an anti-Christian agenda by "banning" all kinds of Christmas activities. In tabloid short hand this becomes the "war on christmas". It's all very surreal, for a start most Brits, regardless of their beliefs, love their Christmas. I love Christmas, as do most of atheist friends and family. Christmas, alongside the New Year celebrations, make a fantastic end of year come mid-winter jamboree, a chance to celebrate with work colleagues, a chance to put some thought into buying presents for those you care about, and most certainly, yes a chance to indulge in some nice food, fine wines and hard spirits.  But, this isn't the Christmas that the likes of the Daily Mail wish to defend, in fact, they don't like our Christmas, and pine (sic) instead for a enforcement of a purely religious festival.

Last year the phoney War On Christmas started in early November, but there was early skirmishing in September when Steve Doughty on the Daily Mail enthusastically reported comments by the Archbishop of York that Muslims should integrate more and no-one should consider Christmas cards to any way embarass our Muslim friends and neighbours. The War got into full swing on November 7 when the Royal Mail were attacked over the outrageous crime of producing festive stamps that featured Santa Claus and snowmen. Four days later the Archbishop of York (again) attacked the rights of businesses and individuals to send secular or non-Christian Christmas cards. By December the Daily Mail was complaining that only 1 in 100 Christmas cards in shops depicted religious themes, never mind that the British public seemingly prefer secular themes.

In 2005 the campaign was launched by, yes you guessed it, the Daily Mail on November 2 with claims that Lambeth council had renamed its Christmas lights in order to avoid causing "offence".

For any tabloid hack writing a War on Christmas story it is apparently compulsory to include references to a PC campaign to re-name Christmas..."Winterval". The evil geniuses behind this campaign are said to be Birmingham City Council. This is because winterval came to prominence in 1998 when Birmingham City Council used it as a title to encompass the three month collection of multi-faith and secular events, running from October to January, and including Diwali, Bonfire Night, New Year and other seasonal events as well as Christmas itself. Winterval ran for 2 years - 1997 to 1998 and was intended as a way to drive business into Birmingham's newly rejuvenated town centre.

But what's facts got to with it. Oliver Burkeman on the Guardian set out to investigate the facts behind the War on Christmas stories, and found them to be a load of old baubles:

."..a few awkward facts. Luton does not have a festival called Luminos. It does not use any alternative name for Christmas. When it did, once, five years ago, hold something called Luminos one weekend in late November, the event didn't even replace the council's own Christmas celebrations, let alone forbid anyone else from doing anything. Similarly, Christmas is not called Winterval in Birmingham. The Royal Edinburgh Hospital for Sick Children never banned a Christmas CD for mentioning Jesus. And Chester council's "un-Christian" Christmas card says - as cards have done for decades - "Season's Greetings".

"We're not going to have a war, we're going to have the appearance of a war," says the cynical spin doctor in David Mamet's screenplay for the 1997 movie Wag The Dog, about an imaginary conflict created to whip up support for an ailing president. But he might equally have been talking about the 2006 war on Christmas - a war that tells us much about the growing politicisation and sense of entitlement among religious groups in Britain, but which turns out to have been almost entirely invented."

So, when's it going to start? There can be no question of if or maybe, we know for sure that bishops and archbishops will make alliance with journalists to play fast and loose with the facts and launch another phoney War on Christmas. The ironic thing about all this is that there really appears to be absolutely no war on traditional Christian activities, but there is a crusade against the secular Christmas much enjoyed and valued by most Brits. 

Let's keep our collective ears to the ground and see who fires the first shots in this year's annual pantomime of nonsense. Perhaps we should develop an idiot award for bloggers, bishops and hacks who trot out the winterval myths...perhaps an award for being a winterval wally, the Wallies for short?

 

John Prescott, the Polish Women's Party, and the big clunking fist

It seems John Prescott has had a profound influence on the campaigns of the Polish Women's Party and their approach to, ahem, voter contact.  Watch their latest campaign ad here and all will be explained:

Poll in tomorrow's Observer - Labour back in the lead

Tomorrow's Observer will publish a new Ipsos/Mori poll that has Labour clearly in the lead for the first time since October (Labour 39% Tories 36% Lib Dems 15%). Seems voters have got Bullingdon Dave Cameron's card marked as they rate his performance worse than Blair's and put Brown way ahead of him as being a good candiate for the top job. New times, new times.

I'm backing Amnesty International

After a few years lapsed membership I have rejoined Amnesty International, I should have done this before but as the catholic church reaches new lows in its immorality and sheer spite in the way it intervenes in international humanitarian issues, this time by calling for a boycott of Amnesty International, I've rejoined today.

The whole sorry saga seems to have angered many catholics as well as atheists, Belgian or otherwise!

Our right to know exactly what we are eating

In an age where religious rights are still allowed to trump other civil and human rights, the rights of animals clearly have no chance. Despite the Farm Animal Welfare Council finding that killing animals without stunning them first - halal - caused severe suffering, the government rejected a ban on this form of cruelty.

The cruelty goes on, but consumers surely  have the right to know if the meat they are buying at the supermarket has been killed by using these unnecessarily cruel methods? Sadly, this is not a given. The Foods Standards Agency is consulting on this issue of labelling. And anyone who feels strongly about the issue should contact Anthony Flower (email) and let him know.

Sego's failure with older voters meant she was (French) toast

Labour deputy leadership candidates may be keen to promote youth politics, but how's this for more evidence that any centre-left campaign is doomed if it fails to be electorally competitive with older voters.

Analysis of the results of the 2007 Presidential election in France by IPOS shows the gaping differences in the voting preferences of the youngest and oldest French voters. Nicholas Sarkozy’s victory was built upon very high levels of support from older voters, Sarkozy won 61% of the vote from voters aged 60-69 and 68% from voters aged 70 and above. In contrast 58% of voters aged 18-24 preferred his socialist rival Segolene Royal. Faced with these levels of support for Sarkozy from older voters Royal faced an impossible task of finding compensating leads amongst voters of other age groups or sociological category - sego was, how do you say, (French) toast.

Stirring up apathy across the land

Thanks to stumbling and mumbling for pointing out that 84% of the population did not vote for Cameron's Conservatives in last week's elections. Now to state the bloody obvious it was hardly a great night for Labour but only managing to get 16% of the electorate to vote for you during a period of incredible difficulty for the government is hardly worth the label "stunning".

Virgin Airways served up conspiracy "docs" during in-flight entertainment

Unbelievable, I missed this, Virgin Airways have been offering up the "9-11 was a government conspiracy" film "loose change" for in-flight "entertainment". They've been humilated by the protests and withdrawn the film. Virgin have got this badly wrong, but this also shows us how irrational nonsense can spread like wildfire.