If we middle-aged people are the new swing voters, why are the major political parties doing their very best to ignore us? At 44, Rishi Sunak is the baby of the group, Sir Keir Starmer a youthful 61, Lib Dem leader Ed Davey is 58 (still clinging onto his paddle-board) and Reform UK’s Nigel Farage clocked up three score years in April.
So all four men are perfectly-placed to understand what makes what author Douglas Coupland designated as Generation X tick, and what keeps us awake at night too. Writing before the last General Election, in 2019, Torsten Bell, chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, an economic think-tank, argued that, “old and young seats are becoming the new safe seats for the Conservatives and Labour respectively, just as old and young voters are becoming their core supporters.
Still, if we mid-lifers hold the make-or-break power Bell talks about, why are politicians not going all out to appeal to our concerns too? This generation, often raising children whilst paying off a mortgage and dealing with rising costs of everything from pet food to car insurance, was first identified as ‘the squeezed middle’ more than a decade ago, but largely sidelined when it came to actual policies that might help.
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