On age advantage in general elections

There have been 20 elections in the UK since the end of the second world war. A recent post looked at the vote share of the two main parties (Conservative and Labour) in these elections. Another, perhaps less well-grounded, updated the remarkable record of graduates of Oxford university being the winners – now 18 times out of the 20.

Yet another, but not altogether serious, statistic about elections which is easily captured is the age difference between the contenders (Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition), shown for the post-war period in the chart below.

The green shadow indicates where the election generated a change of governing party. 1945, following the wartime coalition led by Winston Churchill, and 2010, leading to a Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition led by David Cameron, are assumed to be changes of party. Eight of the 20 elections were then of this kind. In the four elections from 1966 to 1974 the age difference between the contenders was insignificant, Harold Wilson being born in March and Edward Heath in July 1916. For this reason, no conclusions can be drawn about the 1970 and February 1974 changes of government. However, in five of the remaining six elections in which there was a change of party, the successful challenger was younger, on four occasions by 10 years or more. The only older successful challenger was in 1951, when, having failed to displace Clement Attlee in 1950, Churchill returned to the Prime Ministership.

In the 12 continuity elections (ie with no consequent change of governing party), Wilson’s successes against Heath in 1966 and October 1974 are as before insignificant as far as age differences are concerned. Cameron’s success in 2015 against Ed Miliband, who was three years younger, and John Major’s in 1992, when a year and a day older than Neil Kinnock, are probably best regarded as inconclusive as well. In the eight remaining continuity elections, three of the victors had an age advantage of more than 10 years and two were more than five years younger. Three were older, Margaret Thatcher’s defeat of Kinnock in 1987, when more than 15 years older, being easier to understand than Harold Macmillan’s of Hugh Gaitskell in 1959 when more than ten years older.

Is there any underlying significance to all this? It could be that for the electorate to move a party from opposition to government, there has to be an appetite for change and the case for fulfilling it can be made more convincingly by a younger person – Wilson in 1964, Margaret Thatcher in 1979, Tony Blair in 1997, Cameron in 2010.

And what should the two parties’ strategies be for the next election if they were to take age advantage seriously? Labour would, it seems, be more likely to succeed in selling change to the electorate with a much younger leader than Jeremy Corbyn, 68 but now not easily dislodged. It is worth noting that while Cameron at 43 in 2010 was the youngest PM since 1812, Justin Trudeau became Canadian Prime Minister in 2015 at the same age and Emmanuel Macron was elected president of France this year at 39. Labour might well want to wait for the Tories to move first but ought already to be considering that their man or woman should be much more than five years younger than Boris Johnson or Amber Rudd (both currently 53) and significantly younger than Michael Gove (49, going on 60) or Sajid David (47). The Conservatives (on the assumption that Theresa May is no longer PM by then) should aim to nullify any future Labour leader’s age advantage by choosing someone in their early forties. It would also be to the Tory’s advantage to play it long and keep Labour waiting.   Oh, and if they'd been to Oxford ...

Anyone thinking of starting up a new party under, say, David Miliband, should remember that he is 52 next month. How time passes.


Update 27 June 2017 

On 25 June, the Sunday Telegraph carried an article by Ben Riley-Smith, Tory plot to skip 'toxic' generation and install younger face as next leader.

Tory MPs and donors are plotting to “skip a generation” and install a younger MP as their next leader after concluding the front-runners to replace Theresa May are too toxic. A growing number of Conservatives believe that Boris Johnson and David Davis have “had their day” and only younger faces can revive the party’s fortunes.  

… Hopes are now turning to the “golden generation” of Tory MPs first elected in 2010 to win back younger voters who voted for Jeremy Corbyn en masse at the election.  Sajid Javid, the Business Secretary, Dominic Raab, the Eurosceptic justice minister, and Priti Patel, the International Development Secretary, are all being talked up by colleagues.  Other ministers from the 2010 intake such as Jesse Norman, Brandon Lewis and Jo Johnson - the brother of Boris - are also mentioned as possible contenders.  

Supporters of the plan point to how David Cameron, the last Tory to win the party a majority, was barely known when he joined the leadership race in 2005.  

“If and when this happens, we need Year Zero – a real radical revolution,” said one 2010 MP about a leadership switch.  “We need an equivalent to Ruth Davidson [the Scottish Tory leader] – someone completely counter-intuitive. She is a lesbian kick-boxer who doesn’t fit the mould. When she first got elected she didn’t have much cut through. But because they are new and different it will gather stream [sic].” 

One veteran MP warned that “all the front-runners are contaminated in one way or the other". Another younger MP said: “They’ve had their day and it hasn’t worked. For the current lot – Boris and the rest of them – their time is up.

Raab is 43; Patel, 45; Norman, 55; Lewis and Jo Johnson, both 46.

The Oxford Incumbency continues (just)

It was back in October 2013 that I posted about the very high proportion of elected British Prime Ministers who were Oxford University graduates. The table I produced then is due for an update following the general election on 8 June 2017:

As are some the points which I made:

In 18 of the 20 general elections since 1945, the winning Prime Minister was educated at Oxford.

Of the 11 elected Prime Ministers since 1945, nine went to Oxford; of all 13 PMs since the war, ten went to Oxford.

On only one occasion, 1951, did an Oxford-educated incumbent, Clement Attlee, lose to a non-Oxford person –the “Former Naval Person”, Winston Churchill.

In only one election, 1992, had neither candidate been to Oxford.


Notes 

(1) Harold Macmillan did not graduate from Oxford, his studies having been interrupted by war service.

(2) Known as University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire in Neil Kinnock’s time there.

(3) Cameron, a Conservative, led a coalition from 2010 to 2015.

The Oxford Incumbency

In the FT Weekend Magazine of 26/27 October, its editor, Simon Kuper, indulges in a trip down memory lane in the form of My return to Oxford, 25 years on, with the theme:

The Oxford I knew – shot through with sexual harassment, racism, dilettantism and sherry – has been replaced by something quite professional and money-conscious.

He tells his readers:

It wasn’t very hard to get into Oxford in my day, as almost all students – whether from private or state schools – were drawn from the small British upper and upper-middle class. Moreover, most were men.

and

Once you’d got in, little effort was expected. … Often an entire week’s workload consisted of writing one shortish essay (good preparation for being a columnist). Some of my essays were so shoddy that when I reread them before my final exams, I almost wrote to my old tutors to apologise. Many tutors didn’t care anyway. … A tutor in my college was known for exposing himself to some students, and trying to recruit others to the intelligence services. Another harassed so many female students that finally action was taken: he was banned from tutoring women one-on-one. Political correctness was not rampant then.

He justifies this remembrance of things past by pointing out that:

All this might seem like ancient history, except that many of today’s British politicians – David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Michael Gove, George Osborne – were Oxford contemporaries or near-contemporaries of mine.

(although not, apparently, Boris Johnson, subject of the cover story on the FT Weekend Magazine a month earlier – but see Note 4 below) despite the fact that:

Oxford had educated Thatcher (and most other recent British prime ministers) and yet it felt apolitical.

The table below supports the statistical element of this remark:

Some interesting points:

• In 16 of the 18 general elections since 1945, the winning Prime Minister was educated at Oxford.
• Of the 10 PMs elected since 1945, eight went to Oxford.  Of all 13 PMs since the war, nine went to Oxford. 
• On only one occasion, 1951, did an Oxford-educated incumbent, Clement Attlee, lose to a non-Oxford person –the “Former Naval Person”, Winston Churchill. 
• In only one election, 1992, had neither candidate been to Oxford. 

In 2015, it seems highly likely that two Oxford graduates will be in contention for the Prime Ministership: David Cameron as incumbent and Ed Miliband. This has been the case in eight elections since 1945, in six of which the incumbent remained in office (which would be 2015A). The two precedents for Miliband’s becoming PM (2015B) are Edward Heath displacing Harold Wilson in 1970 and Wilson displacing Alec Douglas-Hume in 1964. Miliband’s winning is not impossible, of course, but the second of these precedents is not particularly encouraging, Cameron being a far more credible incumbent than Douglas-Hume.

Notes
(1) Harold Macmillan did not graduate from Oxford, his studies having been interrupted by war service.
(2) Known as University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire in Neil Kinnock’s time there.
(3) Cameron, a Conservative, has been leading a coalition since 2010.
(4) Osborne and Miliband graduated in 1992, Cameron and Gove in 1988 and Johnson in 1987; Kuper circa 1991.


UPDATE 30 OCTOBER

If you found this post interesting, you might like:
Ages at the Audience
and
Top Politicians: Birth Order and Handedness