Labour and young voters

Despite admitting that "nearly two-thirds of voters below the age of 40" voted Labour, Felix Martin is strangely "sceptical" that any party is "anywhere close to an agenda" that can satisfy the concerns of the young (The young and the left, 30th June, 2017). He even says that discovering what young people want from their representatives "requires a bit of educated guesswork", when he actually provides ample evidence himself in later paragraphs. It is quite obvious that Labour`s proposals to increase taxation on corporations and the "richest 5 per cent" appealed more than the Tories` wealth tax on grounds of fairness, as the rich are rightly perceived as avoiding paying their fair share for far too long.

   That the "current alignment to the left" will dominate UK politics for the next twenty years is hardly the "worrying development" which Martin makes it out to be. The party which fails to have "fairness" at its policies` core will flounder; the one which promises selection at the age of eleven, and grammar schools, rather than the level playing field of equality of opportunity, will lose out, as will one which ignores the increasing gaps between the rungs in the social mobility ladder. Top jobs cannot be the preserve of the privately educated; unpaid internships cannot be allowed any longer. Obscene pay levels at the top, the provision of affordable housing and the ridiculous burden of student loans have been ignored by all parties for too long. The unfairness of Tory austerity policies, and the obvious failure to act on May`s rhetoric have not gone unnoticed.

  Labour has most definitely "devised a solution" to "intergenerational inequality", and the right ignore it at their peril!