Why it’s wrong to claim the Conservatives are now the party of the working class

The Conservatives are now the party of the working class which, a panicky Keir Starmer confessed, has “lost trust” in Labour – or so the story goes.

It appears to be an unstoppable narrative, in the wake of blue-collar Hartlepool turning blue while leafy Chipping Norton and Cambridgeshire swung red on the same landmark weekend last month.

The switch is said to have been accelerating since Boris Johnson won his general election landslide in 2019, when he claimed an astonishing 15-point lead among the lowest-earning fifth of voters.

Game, set and match then? Well, no, according to an important new analysis that suggests politics-watchers – and the Labour leader himself – have got it all wrong.

Yes, the data from that epoch-changing 2019 election shows the Conservatives winning most voters among every income group except people surviving on under £10,000... but here’s the twist.

When it comes to voters of working age, someone had to be earning around £35,000 – more than the median income – before she or he was more likely to vote Tory than Labour.

So, the working class still backs Labour – it is only when “working class” people who are actually retired are included that the reverse is true.

In fact, once retired people are stripped out, Labour actually “won” the contest at the last election by 38.7 per cent to 35.6 per cent, the data shows.

Now, we can argue about whether one is still working class in one’s old age, but what this definitely disproves is Sir Keir’s gloomy statement that his party has “lost the trust of working people”.

And the key point is that these pensioner voters have completely different interests to working-class people who actually go out to work.

Around three-quarters of over-65s own their own home outright, so – while they may have low-ish incomes – that lack of housing costs, plus decent pensions now disappearing, means they are doing quite nicely.

That’s all just a pipe dream for the modern working class, paying sky-high rents to ruthless private landlords, juggling multiple jobs with uncertain hours and few rights, and still more likely to back Labour.

Now, none of this is to doubt the party’s crisis. There are huge numbers of older people, they are growing in number and – crucially, unlike younger people – they turn out in force on polling day.

But it is grey hair – not a blue collar – that is keeping the Conservatives in power.