Hope and affordable housing or demolition?

And now for some observations from somebody else's elections. Britain has just come through a round of local votes and the results seem to imply big changes in how that country's democracy might function in the next decade.

The New York Times summarizes:

... Millions of Britons voted in elections to Parliaments in Scotland and Wales, and to municipalities in England. And they delivered a damning verdict on [Prime Minister] Starmer’s governing Labour Party. ... [Labour is analogous to our Democratic Party; it has a large majority of the seats in Parliament which means its elected leader runs the government.]

The main victor on Thursday was the right-wing populist Reform U.K. party [Britain's MAGA], which gained more than 1,400 seats on municipal councils across England. The party took seats from the Conservative Party and from Labour and consolidated its status as the dominant party of Britain’s political right. But the left-wing Green Party also made gains at the expense of Labour. 

The results shattered the grip on power long held by Labour and the Conservative [Party], and signaled a new political landscape in which at least seven parties are vying for votes across Britain.

Although this complicated set of local elections won't mean the end of the central Labour government for now, clearly something's stirring -- and even looking from the US, this seems to mark a significant political shakeup -- something bigger than the fact that Starmer seems a literally unappealing leader.

The British left-wing political blog Another Angry Voice, by Thomas G. Clark, has lots to say about the apparent crack up in British politics, one section of which might seem highly familiar to us in the U.S. 

What did we learn from the 2026 elections?... Demographics 

This topic always provokes fury from the "not all boomers" brigade, but it’s absolutely undeniable now.

The biggest determining factor in how people used to vote in the 20th Century was social class. The biggest determining factor in how people vote these days is age.

If only the votes of working age people were counted, the results would be very different, with the Greens, Labour, and the Lib-Dems faring dramatically better.

If only pensioners votes were counted, we’d be looking at even more massive Reform gains.

... The working age population want some hope; and affordable housing; and decent wages; and workers rights; and investment economics. The boomers want a [radical fascist Nigel] Farage-style demolition job on the last remnants of the post-war [welfare state]settlement. You know, the mixed economy economic conditions that made them the richest generation ever.

Their parents’ generation fought in WWII to stop the extreme-right, now they’re absolutely gagging for the extreme-right to tear down the last remnants of the post-war legacy that their parents’ generation left them.

It’s not all of them, but it’s a huge percentage of them. ...

Makes me wonder how much of the strength of MAGA can similarly be largely attributed to Donald Trump's (and my) age cohort. 

The Pew Research Center provides some suggestive data from 2024. They explicitly include both people who are willing to say they identify with a US political party and also those whose lean toward one or the other; lots of voters claim independence, but actually possess a persistent lean as a consequence of the system offering election after election with only two choices.

Age, generational cohorts and party identification 

Today, age is strongly associated with partisanship – and this pattern has been in place for more than a decade.

The Democratic Party holds a substantial edge among younger voters, while the Republican Party has the advantage among the oldest groups.
    •    About two-thirds of voters ages 18 to 24 (66%) associate with the Democratic Party, compared with 34% who align with the GOP.
    •    There is a similarly large gap in the partisan affiliation of voters ages 25 to 29 (64% are Democrats or lean that way vs. 32% for Republicans).
    •    Voters in their 30s also tilt Democratic, though to a lesser extent: 55% are Democrats or Democratic leaners, 42% are Republicans or Republican leaners.

Neither party has a significant edge over the other among voters in their 40s and 50s:
    •    Half of voters in their 40s associate with the Democratic Party, and 47% are affiliated with the Republican Party.
    •    The shares are reversed among voters in their 50s: 50% align with the Republicans, 47% with the Democrats.

Among voters ages 60 and older, the GOP holds a clear advantage:
    •    Republican alignment is 10 percentage points higher than Democratic alignment (53% vs. 43%) among voters in their 60s.
    •    Voters ages 70 to 79 are slightly more likely to be aligned with the GOP (51%) than the Democratic Party (46%). [Might this slight counter trend show we were 1960s rebels once?]
    •    About six-in-ten voters 80 and older (58%) identify with or lean toward the GOP, while 39% associate with the Democratic Party.

As some Brits might say, we too have a boomer problem ... Since older people are more likely to vote than young people, these differences have powerful consequences.

My cohort of progressive boomers do our bit by working to encourage the younger folks to participate!