Starmer's Labour Party has found a new enemy: baby boomers like me

Telegraph

6 days ago

What has the Prime Minister got against us boomers? After all, having been born in 1961, he is one himself.
Sir Keir is a decent man: in person he comes across as straightforward and likeable. Yet it is under his leadership that Labour's class envy has morphed into generational envy. And the main target is the baby-boomer generation, born between 1946 and 1964.
The narrative, assiduously promoted by organisations such as the Resolution Foundation, is all too familiar. Baby boomers, the story goes, stole their children's (or grandchildren's) future. We benefited from various windfalls, notably cheap property, but have bequeathed our progeny only debts.
Younger people – Generation X, millennials and Gen Z – have bought into this narrative. Many show their contempt for those now in their 60s or 70s with catchphrases like 'OK boomer.' Gone is the culture of respect for old age, such as one still encounters in the Far East, India or Africa.
Sir Keir seems to have internalised this narrative. And he is determined to expiate his guilt by punishing the boomers with measures that disproportionately affect them.
This is most obviously the case in fiscal policy. So far this year, my family and I have been hit hard by inheritance tax, stamp duty and capital gains tax – all of which were increased or extended in the last Budget.
Of course, younger people pay taxes too, but any estate agent will tell you that there are few first time buyers in the market. Property taxes are overwhelmingly paid by older people – though it is HMRC rather than the young that benefits.
Inheritance tax also mainly penalises boomers, who have to pay it up front, usually before they get the wherewithal to do so. Even pensions are now subject to this iniquitous levy, which Brits (unlike non-doms) cannot escape.
Farmers are now facing horrible choices if they are to pass on their land and equipment to their children. Most of them are boomers. Another example is second home owners, whose council tax has been doubled. Too bad for boomers who worked and saved hard for their dream cottage in the country or by the sea – and for their families. Small landlords, who are typically boomers with a single property to let, have also been hard hit.
I suspect few boomers recognise themselves in the current negative image of a selfish, entitled, domineering generation. Most of us do our best to share whatever good fortune we may have enjoyed. Where would charities, philanthropy and anything that depends on volunteers be without boomers?
When we were young, nobody talked about 'the bank of Mum and Dad'. Yet now this wholesale transfer of wealth from boomers to younger generations has become a mainstay of the economy.
It is increasingly common for boomers not only to provide deposits but to buy homes for their adult children. Those archetypal boomers Tony and Cherie Blair led the way on this. But Sir Keir is making it more difficult.
We boomers actually feel quite vulnerable now, soon to be categorised as bed-blockers and burdens on a bankrupt nation. Many of us are spooked by the assisted dying Bill, for which the PM has provided parliamentary time and support. Will we soon reach the point where it isn't just our habits, traditions and attitudes, but our very lives that will become redundant?
As for Sir Keir's latest wheeze of votes for 16- and 17-year-olds: what is it, if not another way of relieving his guilt-ridden conscience? Few sixth formers (an outdated boomer term, I know, but a useful one) even want the vote.
It doesn't make sense to claim, as the Prime Minister does, that paying taxes should confer the right to vote. Otherwise, the same logic dictates that those who don't pay taxes should lose that right.
And there is no certainty that the new teenage vote will go to Labour, rather than to the other five or more sizeable parties in Parliament, especially the extremes of Left or Right. That is, after all, what happened in Austria, the only other European country to enfranchise young adolescents: the unsavoury nationalists of the Freedom Party are now in charge.
Sir Keir will gain little by giving votes to children too young to exercise any other civil rights. No, this perverse measure is just another way to expiate his guilt by poking the oldies in the eye.
Perhaps an insecure leader, with little to show for his time in office so far, hopes to gratify his Cabinet and his Party, the great majority of whom belong to younger age groups, by pursuing this vendetta against his own generation. As boomers gradually retire, we will increasingly be seen as fair game. Next on the agenda: a wealth tax.
Yet envy is never a motive that leads to political success. At 67, I am old enough to remember the Labour governments of the 1960s and 70s, which eagerly practised the politics of envy – and thereby blighted their legacy.
Most of the grammar schools from which I, like Sir Keir, benefited were sacrificed on the altar of class resentment. (Tony Blair and Michael Gove later did their best to reinvent them with academies and free schools.)
Generational envy is just as pernicious as class envy. Nobody chose to be a boomer. It makes no sense to confiscate the modest capital that each cohort has managed to accumulate as soon as they reach the threshold of old age. No boomer wants to become dependent on the public purse. We know better than the state how to provide both for posterity and for ourselves.
Every error by a government creates an opportunity for the opposition. Kemi Badenoch (born 1980) is much younger than Sir Keir and she shows no trace of generational guilt or envy. Her driving force is gratitude for being British.
I long for the Conservatives to show some understanding for beleaguered boomers, most of whom are only trying to do the right thing by their families and the country. If Mrs Badenoch can come up with policies that reunite the generations, she will gain our votes. And there are still a lot of us.