'Pension reform' - words guaranteed to make the most sprightly voter feel the onset of rigor mortis. Yet a subject that leaves most people cold has become one of the hottest issues in the general election campaign.
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New Labour and the Tories have entered into a cut-price bidding war designed to demonstrate who cares most about the elderly. Barely a day passes without one of the parties trying to up the stakes again by announcing another initiative ostensibly designed to benefit pensioners.
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When so many politicians and pundits seem obsessed with rooting out the slightest trace of 'sleaze' in UK politics, it is a wonder that more of them are not up in arms about this all-party attempt to buy pensioners' votes with crude bribes.
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Of course, the chancellor of the exchequer is not Mohammed Al Fayed, and the Treasury is not actually handing out manilla envelopes full of cash. The (Gordon) Brown envelopes the government is offering to pensioners contain rather more meagre enticements, like his means-tested minimum income guarantee.
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For the Conservatives, shadow chancellor Michael Portillo has replied in similarly unspectacular style, promising to raise tax allowances a little for the over-65s and to increase the basic pension to give the over-75s a whole pound a week more than under Labour.
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It is not hard to see why the parties are keen to pass off these rather miserly concessions as the height of generosity. All sides see the 'grey vote' as a key factor in the coming general election. There are two reasons for this: one to do with shifts in demography, the other relating to cracks in democracy.
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 | | Despite the party leaders' attempts to look young and dynamic, they have written off the youth vote as a lost cause |
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In demographic terms, there are more pensioners than ever before. An estimated 11 million voters will be aged over 54 in the election. And in terms of the democratic process, these people are more likely to turn out and vote than younger generations. It has been estimated that the over-55s could account for around 40 percent of the vote in some marginal seats.
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This week an Age Concern survey suggested that overall turnout in the coming general election could fall by around seven percent compared to the 1997 election, from 71 to 64 percent (1997 was already the lowest turnout since the Second World War). But the survey also suggests that the proportion of pensioners voting will be the same as last time. The grey vote will carry even more weight by default, as the young become increasingly disaffected from the political system.
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This repeats the pattern seen in the recent US presidential election, where the over-45s accounted for 50 percent of votes cast, and the over-60s for 22 percent - far more than the 17 percent of voters aged under 30. In the key state of Florida, 27 percent of those who voted were over 60 years old, accounting for almost twice as many votes as the under-30s. Little wonder that so much of the US campaign focused on pensioner-related issues, or that things are shaping up along similar lines in the UK.
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Behind the displays of concern, the authorities hold pensioners in contempt, as bodies to be bought on the cheap come election time. The rest of the time, everywhere from the health service to the home, the elderly are too often treated like rubbish. The infamous occasion on which leading Blairite backbencher Clive Soley, speaking at a meeting of Labour MPs, dismissed most pensioners as right wing and racist, says more about official attitudes to the elderly today than all the granny-hugging PR.
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That displays of phoney concern for the elderly have become so central to the election campaign also speaks volumes about the decrepit state of political life. The all-party focus on the grey vote is an implicit admission that, despite the desperate attempts of the party leaders to look young and dynamic, they have written off the youth vote as a lost cause. A casual observer could be forgiven for thinking that all they are offering young people is the promise of an extra pound a week when they reach 75. That should have them queuing at the polling booths in May.
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Pensioners do not need to be patronised in this way, treated like little children who can be bought off with a few shiny sweeties. The 'dignity' that the politicians promise pensioners all of the time might actually mean something if elderly voters were to be treated seriously as adult participants in the political life of a mature democracy. Who knows - an election campaign like that might even spark some interest among the under-55s.
Read on:
spiked-proposals: Pensioners
Going for grey, by Phil Mullan
Sergeant-Major Brown's "Grey Army", by Jennie Bristow
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