Quote Originally Posted by the other bob wilson View Post

I keep on waiting to see something from people living in areas like Hartlepool which can logically explain why they are now voting in large numbers for a party which their parents and grandparents would never have trusted and I've not seen anything yet which satisfactorily explains it. However, one thing which is emerging is that people in Hartlepool, and many other towns like it, no longer feel the Labour party represents them and this is a situation which, frankly, the party should be ashamed of.
Some young voters in Hartlepool were interviewed on TV recently. As you say, they admitted that their parents/grandparents were horrified that they could even contemplate voting Conservative. The problem is that the older generation are stuck in a 1980's Maggie Thatcher time-warp (closure of the mines etc) about which young people have no direct knowledge. One also mentioned
corruption amongst local Labour councillors (heaven forbid, surely not) as a reason for turning her back on the Labour party. Maybe these young people do not seem themselves as the old traditional working class people anymore and therefore the Labour party is irrelevant to them?