Britain has been an ageing country for so long now that we’ve arguably almost forgotten how it feels to be anything else. Keeping older voters happy, while banking on the young and restless failing to vote, has been the secret sauce of so many Conservative victories that it’s come to feel like an immutable electoral law. Yet an unexpectedly good showing for the Democrats in last week’s midterm elections, after this spring’s defeat for the right in Australia, shines an interesting light on what can happen in countries where progressive-minded and frustrated millennials start to outnumber baby boomers – the same transition Britain is now quietly undergoing too.
Millennials are, of course, no longer the pesky kids of middle-aged imagination, but increasingly solid citizens in their 30s and early 40s. They already outnumber boomers in the global workforce and are old enough to be occupying increasingly senior jobs, from which they can start to set the office culture. In private life, they’re no longer footloose and fancy-free; plenty are parents now, wincing at rocketing nursery bills and poring anxiously over Ofsted reports. Some are homeowners worried that their mortgage is about to go through the roof, while others are renters despairing of being able to buy. And crucially, the next election will be the first at which British millennials are likely to make up a bigger share of the population than boomers.
