More money, less Thatcher: What young voters want from the Tories

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0:37Is the Tory party just a retirement home for boomer voters? And if not, how is Kimmy Bagnock going to win back the feckless youth? We're here in Birmingham for Conservative Party Conference to find out why. Welcome to this special edition of The Daily Tea with me, Camilla Tominey. Me, Tim Stanley. And me, Poppy Coburn. You did find two people that listened to The Daily Tea there. I did. I think it's the only thing holding this country together is the audience for the Daily Tea. No, no, no, no, no. For anyone under 40, this whole conversation is so beyond their memory. It's so strange for Britain to be relitigating Thatcherism.

1:13Whether you love her or loathe her, for heaven's sake, you need to move on. I think when Kemi is being strongest is when she's offering really tangible policies that are actually going to put money back in your pocket.

1:35Hooray! Hooray!

1:42Before we get into a discussion about the nuts and bolts of the youth of today and whether Young Conservative is an oxymoron, I need to tell you that our YouTube membership is thriving. We've got 50 members and counting. If you want extra special content... 50 ,000. 50 million. $50 ,000. $500 million. Said 50. 50 ,000. 50 ,000. Yes. We've got lots of members. We need more members. So do sign up if you want some extra special content. You just don't know what might happen behind closed doors between me and Tim, the little conversations we have at our desks. Are we serving up this country? That doesn't go up online, does it?

2:18No. In fact, if you heard the conversations we had at our desks, nothing would get published. So we are here to talk about young conservatives, of which there are many in the room. and thank you for joining us. Clearly it isn't an oxymoron. Now, can I just say something? It's the only person on the panel that was born right wing. I'm just going to make...

2:44Literally came out of there with a twin set of pearls on while you two were flirting with socialism. Thank you. That is the right response. Having come from Liverpool, where socialist schmaltz appeared to be the order of the day. Poppy Coburn, you've been on a journey. Not a Robert Jenrick journey, but a journey nonetheless. No, I mean, at least you can say if you had grown up in Liverpool, you'd have an excuse if you were a socialist. I grew up in Essex and I still turned out left-wing until I was having to pay taxes at the age of 21. Funnily enough, I really changed my mind. Not sure what it was, really.

3:21But yes, I was very left-wing. I've written about it before. There are photos out there. you won't be able to find them. I have taken them down from Internet Archive. You really cannot find them anymore. But yeah, it was very left wing. I actually voted my first election for Jeremy Corbyn. I know. Don't ever mention his name again. So I am the only young person in this room who wasn't a young conservative. Unless any of you guys have something to tell me at the end. Please, don't make me feel too alone. So I voted for Jeremy Corbyn in 2019. and then at the last election I did vote for a right-wing party but it wasn't for the conservatives so I have been on a journey politically it's not why I've necessarily ended up but I think it's one that might speak to some people who were left wing when they were younger and now have since changed and updated their politics because what I really want to ask the audience today why have you stuck with the conservative party there are now three parties on the right there's been major splits going on the last couple of years we have had conservative governments for 14 years in a row we've got a worse one now under Labour but I'm not really sure that's a positive reason for the vote for the Tories so I really like to find out and I think when we get to the Q &A section why have you stayed loyal or maybe why have you been won over so that's my confession before we get to your lefty beginnings Tim before you saw the light can we also point out Poppy you You were like a Dale Vince mad Extinction Rebellion nutbag, weren't you?

4:46That would have been much nicer if I was a millionaire activist. I'd probably still be left wing. No, I was. I was a serious activist. I was the opposite of a young conservative. I was going out there. I was shouting. I was marching. I was doing stuff for the Extinction Rebellion. You're really making me hate it in this room, Camilla. I'm a lot more concerned about this. No, but you're going to have... Is this why the wine is here? That's exactly why. But also, you see the light. And we're going to celebrate that. It's like a struggle session. This is very communist China. You've now got the zealotry of a convert, because you're properly right-wing, and you make all of the arguments for us on the newspaper, but also on the airwaves and all the rest of it.

5:19And frankly, it's refreshing to see. Thank you very much, Poppy Cobra. I might be more right-wing than you do. Can we ask, why did Poppy vote reform rather than Tory? I said a party of the right. I didn't say reform. Right. Oh, blimey. No, it was reform. But it could have been another one. You know, I wanted to keep the suspense up. Well, I think the interesting thing, because I went through that transitional period where I was moving away from left-wing politics because I actually had to start paying taxes and started to read my books and thought about life, I still had a Conservative government.

5:50And at the time, the Conservative Party was not offering what I think a lot of people in the country felt that they were not offering the things that they'd promised. I'd watched immigration hit record highs, get nearly a million a year. I had watched my financial prospects be ruined. The prospect of owning a home was further away than I could have possibly have imagined. I didn't really feel that the Conservative Party in conserving anything. But I think what's interesting the last year is that has changed again. So a lot of people who felt they had to move away from the Conservatives are now slowly being pulled back in.

6:19But this is not the room to tell you this because by virtue of being here, you are Conservatives. So apologies. Well, some people may have been on their own journeys. Tim, you're at Cambridge. You had to be a lefty, right? No, well, yeah. I'm of the view, like in Ab Fab, that you only go to university to shut it down. And I think being young, aren't you supposed to be left wing? I mean, isn't it an inherent part of being young? I think you're odd for having been right wing. Just a heartless old harridan, even at the age of 13. Yeah. Well, I loved Margaret Thatcher. Really? Yes. Okay.

6:59I sort of felt like I grew up with two iconic women of the 20th century, Margaret Thatcher and Princess Diana. and my parents liked both of these women in equal measure. Right. And I mean, I had a very privileged upbringing, so maybe go to private school and the rest of it. I remember when Thatcher was deposed and I had two very left-wing teachers walking down the corridor behind me, kind of reveling in it. And I was at an all-girls school and I said, I don't know why you're celebrating the fall of a woman at the hands of a man. And they looked startled. But yeah, I don't know why. I was just resolutely right-wing, always and never even flirted with the other side, even when at Leeds University, following in Keir Starmer's footsteps and studying law there.

7:43Right. Well, I went to a grim bourgeois Protestant grammar school that was so right-wing that in the 1997 election, I was the Labour candidate in the mock election and got one vote. By contrast, it was so unpleasantly right-wing that there was a split among the fascists and both the national front and the bnp were on the ballot which amazed the school allowed so to me growing up i just thought at the tail end of the major government it just felt like a straitjacket that i wanted to throw off hang on i think i'm starting to find a pattern here because you grew up in liverpool you went to a very right-wing school i went to a very right-wing grammar school yes same here yeah yeah you kip won our school elections well we just want to break conventions don't we but then when i moved it's a little psychological when i moved to brighton in my 20s when I was then surrounded by these people well that moved me back towards the right and hang on it's tonight going to turn you to the left you're surrounded in a room of conservatives it's all dependent upon postcode for me it's all about postcode but I went to the Green Party conference this week which was which was an occupational hazard which was in Brighton which is a town where everyone is insane.

9:00And for fans of the film Videodrome, it's like the way in which in that film people's imaginations metastasize into real life. The Green Party is a metastasized Brighton and it has trickled over, it has spawned a politics that is simply balmy. But it's very popper among the young. And I did notice, not only was it a very youthful conference, It was also a very white conference. And I attended a session which I had to go to, which was about checking your privilege. Oh, my goodness. Because I like to check in on my privilege. Not all that often, let's be honest. It's still there, and it's very strong.

9:40But this session was hosted by a black gentleman who began by saying that very often as a person of color, you find yourself in situations that don't reflect you. He was talking to an audience that was 99 % white. And his whole talk was about how people of color are discriminated against and not listened to. And the white people in the audience kept interrupting him to tell him the ways in which black people are not listened to and ignored. And eventually, after a young man with half purple and half green hair like Two-Face in Batman, had said, excuse me, I can think of one other way in which black people are discriminated against.

10:23the presenter said you know sometimes I just think it's important to sit and listen so it was all a reminder of the wonderful madness of writing you did find two people that listened to the daily tea there I did I think it's the only thing holding this country together is the audience for the daily tea that's right so let's look there at some of Kemi Badenock's key pledges before we open the floor to questions and we've had quite a few just today alone so she's announced this end to the 100 ,000 pound cliff edge for parents who lose their right to 30 hours free child care a week because they're deemed to earn too much money.

11:03We've also got 50 ,000 prison places to be paid for by slashing the foreign aid budget, which everyone remembers was David Cameron's little baby. Speaking of which, the man who wanted to hug a hoodie has now been replaced by a woman who I don't know what she wants to do with hoodies but I think it's called tough love. So that's changed as well. We've got stamp duty scrapped which is brilliant if anyone actually is able to get on the housing ladder but many people in this room probably haven't. I'm not talking about the boomers by the way. We know you're living in a leafy home counties town in a detached home.

11:42We'll get on to you in just a moment sir. She also wants to scrap inheritance tax, which I suppose does benefit the children of boomers. It does, but the stamp duty change won't affect them, right, because you don't pay stamp duty on a first purchase, I seem to recall when I made my first purchase. And her reforms to the benefit system mean that if you're in your late 50s and you're made unemployed because you've been paying into the system, you get universal credit at full whack. But if you're young and you're unemployed, you get 70 % of it. You get a subsistence wage which comes in a card which you can't use to buy booze and fags which I think is very unkind to anyone who's unemployed.

12:22My point is, my question is is everything in politics skewed towards weighing the votes of the old without any sort of interest in the material incentive for the young? Well, there is a reason for that. 50 % of the Conservative voting base are pensioners. Now, you could zoom out and look at people who are actually voting in this country. one in four voters are pensioners there's a very good reason why politicians will talk about cutting pip and don't really like to talk about the biggest welfare spending in the country which is pensions because they need the votes of those people so there was a pragmatic reason why they show away from it but something you said there about stamp duty made me think what do we actually mean by young because in politics young has a slightly different meaning than i think anywhere else in the world and no one else can get away with saying a 45 year old is young and yet in conservative circles that would be considered a young voter and yeah seriously under 50s are the conservative youth vote which is very flattering i think if you are on that threshold yeah i mean there's something under 50s are young aren't they tim yeah yeah everyone on the panel is very yes we are thank you very much it's the material issues but also there are certain cultural issues and someone uh so being at the green conference i know they're not reflective youth but it does seem to me that gaza is this generation's iraq or vietnam and has defined the way a lot of young people see their country and foreign policy and the other issue regrettably is brexit and someone was saying to me at the greens and i was having this argument about what is a youth-friendly platform he said you just won't be taken seriously among the young unless you're willing to reverse brexit because of issues of free movement etc and this audience may contradict that but it does seem to me that there's a cultural barrier to the right winning over the young not just a material incentive it should also be pointed out of course that the conservatives along with reform have committed to keeping the triple lock yeah yeah and in fact this morning i was uh doing an incident where it was richard tice was competing with penny maldon about who could defend the triple lock hardest which was quite interesting uh to sit there and go okay well this is politics now in this country that's great um but i suppose there's another aspect to this material discussion of what is good for young people because there is that broad base of who's young and who isn't if you're an older millennial you are going to be inheriting soon that is going to be the biggest cash transfer so you are going to want some changes to happen on inheritance tax if you're a younger person your material circumstances are completely different if you're post 2008 entering the workforce your priorities are different i think what you said tim as well the cultural differences let's speak to my friends and I tell them I'm working for a newspaper, they're like, that's so cool.

14:57I didn't realize they still have those. It's like illuminated manuscripts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But a lot of it is because it's being done through video. And I think what left-wing parties are very good at is making really good video content that doesn't make your toes cull with embarrassment. I'm not going to name any names, Robert Jenrick. Tackling people in the street and shoplifters and all of this stuff. I think it plays well to an older audience, but to a younger one, you're just trying a little bit too hard. Yeah, Robert Jenrick trying too hard. This is it.

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16:07there's a question here from the floor let's ask it now because it's um directly um aimed at whether kemi badenock has got what it takes to attract the youth of today do you feel that kemi with her direct no-nonsense approach attracts support from younger people now there is something very interesting about Kemi Badenock. Actually, we heard Andy Burnham talk about how he was apparently brought up in a cardboard box in the middle of the street, but curiously ended up socially mobilizing all the way to Cambridge, funny enough, under a Tory government. But goodness me, Margaret Thatcher's evil. Actually, comparatively, Kemi Badenock's got the much more compelling story, because when she grew up in Nigeria under a socialist government, she was doing her homework by candlelight.

16:49She was going and fetching water in rusty buckets, she claimed. and yet she's edged away from that narrative and I wrote a column at the weekend saying actually in this world of Instagram too much information maybe vibes do matter and maybe she needs to lean into her personal story a bit more maybe she needs to lean into her ethnicity a bit more but she doesn't want to do that because she wants people to be colorblind about her leadership what do you think? Well I think she should for moral reasons because I think we've got a battle against the far right that needs to be won in this country and the Conservative Party has a unique opportunity to not redefine but reclaim the centre-right from the lunatics.

17:28And there's a very positive story to be told when we're having so many conversations about ethnicity, what is English, what isn't English, about being led by a British Nigerian leader who understands what's flawed about this country but also loves it, what's flawed about where she came from but also what she loves about it. And as the country changes, which it is, and people can bemoan that, but it's happened and it ain't going back. I think she's a generational transitional figure that cuts through culturally. And I don't think we should shy away from both the excitement and the pride I personally feel.

18:01And people laugh at this. I don't give a damn, but they laugh. I feel proud about the fact that the country is being led by a generation of people of a change in ethnicity. I'm very happy to see that being reflected. It doesn't bother me at all, and I'm happy about it. So I'm keen for her to do that. But I wouldn't dismiss Andy Burnham quite so easily as some people do, because he does speak to a desire that many people have for a politics of identity and belonging. And many people are not just poorer now, they're sadder, they're more lonely, they feel something is going. Ironically, his appeal is a little more temperamentally conservative than hers is.

18:45And there are many of us who, when we heard his story about losing his father, that's something we can identify with. Yes. And I think you'd be very silly to dismiss that kind of appeal and just say, ah, who cares about it? No, that actually strikes a chord with people. There is a bit of a difficulty with both of these politicians, though, because you could say that Andy Burnham, with his big conference speech, it was all about the 1970s, you know, a Briton before Thatcher. well kemi badenock has made a big deal of she loves margaret thatcher she loves the dynamism that was brought to this country in the 1980s that's a really really long time ago yes you know i i can speak to my dad who was someone whose life was transformed by thatcher you know he left school at 16 and managed to get a job in the city because of her you know and it great it brought prosperity to our you know to our country and it brought prosperity to my family so it's quite personal but for for people now who don't really have a connection to that world outside of their family members well how are you going to resonate they brought her clothes here last year like the traveling relics of a saint didn't mind it was i'm sorry it was creepy and weird it was creepy and weird well nobody asked you to wear them that's the exclusive bonus content by the way that would give margaret thatcher a sense of modernity if men were to start wearing them no no no no no for anyone under 40 this whole conversation is so beyond their memory it's so strange for Britain to be relitigating Thatcherism.

20:09Whether you love her or loathe her, for heaven's sake, you need to move on. It's unhealthy to still be debating what happened in the 1980s. But some of her appeal, perhaps, was this kind of motherly figure. I mean, it is interesting that the only significant party leader is a woman with three children. She happens to be black. I think that's less relevant to her age and just the way she's positioned herself. Like, is she down with the kids enough? Because we were having a joke before we came on air. You know, what have the Tories given the young? A suggestion that they do more maths and national service.

20:46And I'm wondering actually whether the comparison with Thatcher is relevant now simply because we have some very clear ideological water between Kenny Badenowk and Andy Burnham now. it was slightly muddied wasn't it by Keir Starmer is he right is he left who is he he's Ken Loach one minute he's Blair the next we absolutely now know that this battle for ideas is about people who do want to go back to the 1980s or capitalists versus people who want to go back to the 1970s and socialists and therefore that could really invigorate the young the question is is she making clear enough arguments for conservatism in the face of a social media dominated by figures like Gary Stevenson.

21:29It is also just a feeling of you have to be able to offer some vision that things are going to get better. And I think there's a very compelling vision that's being offered by left-wing figures on social media, as you mentioned, who will at least diagnose in quite catastrophizing terms how badly this country has gone wrong. And the people will feel they're actually being honest about that. It will speak to how they feel about their own lives and their own finances, to be completely frank. I don't think it's enough to just point to a period in time where people weren't alive and say let's go back to that we weren't there for that we want to actually have a roadmap to get there ourselves and i think when kemi is being strongest is when she's offering really tangible policies that are actually going to put money back in your pocket and i think for a lot of young people no one has done that seriously sometimes we overthink it politicians have not actually created policies specifically designed to ease the economic situation of young people in this country for so long that we've kind of forgotten that that's something you can do like sometimes it is actually worth standing up and saying yeah we are going to make it for you to start a family we are going to make it easier for you to buy a home we are going to let you keep your wages we're not just going to take it all we're not going to laugh at you for going down the university route when we encouraged you to do it for your entire youth we're not going to penalize you for doing that we think that if you're ambitious if you work hard as conservatives you deserve to keep the money that you earn and i think that message is one that would really resonate you don't need to patronize people young people don't need guns they don't need to go white bottoms for britain they just need to be told that they're actually part of this country and they're foundational to its future

23:12before we open it out to the floor a difficult question from tim patmore oxford east in brackets what would Camilla, Tim and Poppy do to reunite the right? Uh oh Tim No, not me I've got to think of the answer What do we do to reunite the right? What are we going to do to reunite the right? Well I've been thinking about the BBC's finances recently and one idea I did have for a new hit social media kind of centred show for them reality television show is you put Rupert Lowe Nigel Farage and Kevi Bain knock in a room and it's a scape room and you've got cameras everywhere and you've got to stay there for a month unless you make an electoral pact Wow and you can do donations you can come and you can ask them questions you can get to do challenges maybe you could do like a Bush Tucker trial thing you could get Rupert Lowe to like rate his favourite nationalities you know you can make a real big thing out but all the money would go to comic relief I mean I think the country suffered enough can you be the bridge the only way you can reunite the right is if heviar malay invades the falklands yeah it's the only way it can be done i'm not sure i want to reunite the right do you want to reunite the right do you want reform do you want to pact with reform well there you go because that's what reuniting the right looks like can i just say reunite the right isn't just conservatives no no no this is this is the thing i mean i'm i think one thing that's happened in the last couple of years is we've seen where people really stand and what they really stand for and i don't want to be in any coalition that includes restore right so i i think we're moving okay two years ago that was a valid question because there were things that could be done negotiations that could happen uh and maybe some people needed to swallow their pride and say to nigel farage you should be in this party maybe even leading it but those choices were not made and we've reached a point now where some people have gone so far down the well of insanity that they've just plopped out the other side as a national socialist and I don't want to be in a room with them so yeah there was an extraordinary by-election result in Blackpool where basically because Restore polled at seven percent it cost reform the seat that it ought to have won because it was Blackpool and of course the Labour councillor ended up being elected and I don't know if anyone saw it on social media, but it epitomized the absolute lunacy of this situation that you then had Restore celebrating that Labour had won a reformed seat, which basically makes anyone with a right wing head want it to explode.

25:57Yeah. But we've spoken to some good Restore people who are sane and sensible. And there are even some Restore people, we were told by a pollster, who are doing it because they think reform is too right wing. but if you take the average Restore voter this is a human being who has gone into the polling booth thinking Nigel Farage is too moderate do you want to be in a room with them I'd be kind of interested though in terms of like why has this split actually happened on the right and is there actually a distinction between reform and the Conservatives okay we'll say that Restore are further out than them and I think some people within the upper echelons of the party that's true maybe not for all the activists but do you believe there's actually a difference between reform and the conservatives because if you list off top-line policies there's quite a lot that's in common i'd be interested to find out why is it a vibes thing is it personality is it ethics or is it actually a policy difference that you're seeing i mean there is something to be said for the idea that notwithstanding some of the supporters i mean it's curious isn't it the conservatives gave rupert lowe that seat of that select committee Basically, I managed to find out it's because they knew that he would vote with them.

27:06And maybe there was something, there was some devil in the detail of kind of keeping him on side because it was a two-fingered salute to Farage. Who knows? But I think everybody in this room is deluding themselves if they think that these right-wing parties don't broadly agree on a great deal. I'm as uncomfortable as Tim is about ethno-nationalism. No thanks very much. And had stand-up rows with Rupert Lowe about it. but this idea that actually if you do the electoral maths and in a lot of seats, in fact swathes of the Midlands and the North the right wing vote would poll over 50, maybe even 55 % but that Labour could hold on to those seats it's ridiculous, isn't it?

27:46We will be speaking to Jacob Rees-Mogg tomorrow from the Daily Tea once a young Conservative back in the 1800s and he will be with us in Hall 9 at the ICC at 1pm so if anyone fancies that, an hour with JRM actually chatting about that extraordinary Tucker Carlson interview which I do urge you all to watch, goodness me but thank you very much for being here this evening, enjoy the rest of the conference and that's a wrap

28:25Thank you.