I'm going to do a contrarian number on this widely-praised thread (nothing personal: I just don't agree with it). https://twitter.com/cakeylaura/status/1341412374792835073

The first point to make is that an anecdote about one old guy doesn't explain why the Tories are comfortable on 40% in the polls & Labour struggles to get past 38%. Also, people who fear change are hardly a novelty. Is this then just the greater demographic clout of the old?

If it were, you'd expect polling on social attitudes to show a decline in tolerance. In fact, it shows the opposite over the last 30 years, eg in respect of issues such as same-sex relationships & abortion. Old farts are becoming more socially liberal.
https://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/latest-report/british-social-attitudes-34/key-findings/personal-freedom-the-continued-rise-of-social-liberalism.aspx

But since 1992, we've also seen topics such as immigration, asylum-seeking, the denigration of benefit claimants & anti-wokeness (which emerges in the mainstream with lad mags in the late-90s) become more politically & culturally salient (i.e. obsessively covered in the media).

People compartmentalise, differentiating btw those social phenomena they have personal experience of & those that are mediated. Most of us have family or friends who are cohabiting but unmarried, are gay, or have had an abortion. Getting sniffy would mark you out as weird.

In contrast, few of us know an asylum-seeker or a trans person so the risk of pushback if you crack an off-colour joke down the pub is much less, particularly if you can frame it as "Did you see in the paper/on the TV ..." When we talk about "them", it's largely fictional.

The press has always been Tory-biased & the BBC has tended to allow the press to set the agenda, but there was a clear turn for the worse in the 90s. The key moment was Blair breaking bread with Murdoch, which was as much sociological & economic as political.

This didn't reflect the Sun's power, which was always overstated by friend & enemy alike (particularly in the 83-92 period), but the willingness of the political class to enter into a joint enterprise with the press based on shared interests: the emergence of "the caste".

The consequence of this has been a blurring of boundaries (journos becoming ministers & PM, MPs & spin doctors becoming TV personalities), a general sense of impunity (barely hindered by Leveson or the expenses scandal), & a hysterical rejection of any who challenge the caste.

But what's this got to do with public opinion? The answer is that the media spite we see is largely a reflection of the caste's own anxiety & fear about a real "them": the challenging voices enabled by new media (cf the hatred of the Canary, or Helen Lewis's rant yesterday).

The people that this performative hatred attracts are not low-information, working class grandads complaining about NHS tourism but comfortable, middle-class types (not all of them old) who've done very well since 1992 & instinctively wish to preserve the existing order.

Obviously there will be some socially-conservative ex-Labour voters for whom Brexit marked a political watershed, but to imagine that all that's keeping the Tories aloft is the Red Wall doesn't tally & it ignores the extent to which politics has reverted to a two-party model.

The political problem we're faced with is that Labour is being urged to believe that it can only construct a winning coalition by listening to the socially-conservative, in other words the ventriloquism of the press, whether in the form of Northern bigots or metropolitan TERFs.

To accede would be tactically daft: the Tories will lose their Brexit bonus, the comfortable constituency will shrink in line with the economy, & socialism really is popular. So why do it? Because it is a clear signal that the party wishes to preserve the caste & so re-run 1997.

What Starmer is promising is a smooth handover to a respectable Labour govt that will preserve Brexit (just as Blair preserved Thatcher's legacy), tinker at the edges of social justice & otherwise leave things as they are. The voters they're targeting are middle-class bigots.

The problem is not your racist dad or you nan's insistence that Eddie Izzard looks like a brickie, it's the backward-looking, SUV-driving Labour MP with his Olympic lanyard & Verve CD still nestling in the glove compartment.