Tim Montgomerie (Tories know they’re in crisis. They don’t know how deep it is, 6 September) suggests that the young’s progressive attitudes have arisen because those who influence them have left-leaning views and have taken over the institutions whose ideas are influential. He is wrong. The reasons are much more simple. The young are dissatisfied because they lack secure jobs and work for organisations that only care about shareholder value so don’t value staff who want to do a quality job, and who don’t make any real commitment to their staff’s training or work satisfaction, while demanding long hours. The young can’t get secure housing at a reasonable cost, are indebted to the hilt if they went to university and are faced with climate change, being poisoned by air pollution and plastic in the water and have a government that has no comprehension of ordinary people’s lives.
All these issues stem from the glorification of the free market which underpins this government. So regulation – be it of companies, landlords or the banking sector – is considered basically unnecessary. Along with this is the idea that people are only motivated by money, hence benefit sanctions, together with the notion that those who use the service must pay (tuition fees and rail fares) rather than the collective taxpayer (except if it is banking, of course). The question Montgomerie should ask is, given the underlying Conservative ideology: what is in it for the young? Why would they vote for them?
Jennifer Budden
Plymouth
• So the young are overwhelmingly leaning towards Labour, and Tim Montgomerie is worried. He seems to imply that it is because they have been brainwashed by “large percentages of teachers in schools, academics in universities, journalists, playwrights and other ideas-generators”. He bemoans the ailing influence of such reactionary institutions as the church and the press without offering any real explanation as to why the young might be attracted to more liberal values. Could it be that, liberated from such behemoths, they are learning to think for themselves? Oh dear, how frightening is that?
Robin Pickering
Exeter
• Thank you for printing Tim Montgomerie’s essay in condescension – it reminded me why I dislike the Tories so much. I’ve been told for most of my life that I’ll grow out of socialism, or be “mugged by reality”, as he so quaintly put it. I’m 70, and I’m still waiting.
John Beresford
Chair, South Cambridgeshire constituency Labour party
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