Foresight Ageing Population Panel

Public Opinion is like an 800lb gorilla. It sleeps a lot and much of the rest of the time sits happily chewing on leaves. However, if you poke it with a stick, it gets angry. Public Opinion is pretty irritated at the moment.

The elderly are especially riled. The "poke" was the 75p rise in the pensions. Received wisdom over the past thirty years is that the older voter is pretty fixed in his/her ways and stable, tending to support the Conservative Party. In August of this year, (17th-21st, for The Times), among the over 55s Labour had a four point lead with the Conservatives at 38%, Labour, 42%, the Liberal Democrats 17% and others, including the Nationalists and the Greens and odds and sods, three per cent. Just under a month later, at the height of the petrol crisis, fieldwork on 14-15 for the News of the World showed there had been a seven per cent swing "home" with the figures then recorded as 41% for the Conservatives, 31% for Labour, 20% for the Liberal Democrats and eight per cent for others.

That says two things: first, that among this most stable third of the electorate, Labour's lead is fragile; second, that the Conservatives are not the prime beneficiaries. While the Tory vote intention went up by three points, so did the Liberal Democrats and the others jumped five. What this clearly signals is the dismay in the electorate generally and also in the 55 and overs, that they are not happy with Blair but they are also not best pleased about the alternatives.

The Government and the way they are doing their job of running the country and Tony Blair, rated on how he's doing his job as Prime Minister, both suffered as a result of first the Dome fiasco which erupted in early September, and the second blow of Labour's double whammy, the fuel boycott. Dissatisfaction with the Government among older people went up from 60% in August to 72% in mid September; dissatisfaction with Tony Blair doing his job as Prime Minister went up 13 points from 53% to 66% among the over 55s.

The over 55s are not only a third of the electorate but are more likely to vote in elections. A MORI psephological analysis in the 125 Labour/Conservative marginals show that 41% of the likely voters in seats the Tories would have to win to achieve a hung parliament are over 55s.

I keep getting asked if this is a "blip" and what is the likely lasting effect. My first retort is to say, if you can tell me what the government is going to do about it, I would tell you what the likely impact will be. So far the Government have stonewalled. You can bet your sweet bippy that if the election had been called for October, as was so cynically leaked by Robin Cook and others last spring, before the October petrol taxes would have come down like a shot. As it is, we can expect a reduction in fuel taxes to be announced in November, to take effect just in time for the election which will be called in April for 3rd May still, in my view as Roger Mortimore and I forecast in our book Explaining Labour's Landslide (Politicos) published in summer 1999.