Two centuries ago, Britannia ruled the waves. England was a land of dukes and earls, Harrow and Eton – or so the story goes. But behind Victoria’s rolling hills and pastures green lay another Britain. From Manchester’s cotton mills to the coalfields of South Wales, this workshop of the world was a land where aristocrats harvested rent from country estates whilst workers toiled away in factories – trapped in squalor, disease and grinding poverty.
In 1845, Benjamin Disraeli warned that Britain was becoming a land of “Two Nations,” the privileged and the powerless: owners and renters. Britain, argued Disraeli, must become “one-nation” where every family has a stake in society – fusing two nations into one.
Disraeli’s vision of Britain as one nation became the blueprint for post-war conservatism. Following in Disraeli’s spirit, Harold Macmillan championed a “property-owning democracy” – building a record 354,000 homes as Housing Minister in 1954 – that promised economic security in return for hard work. In the eighties, extending homeownership to millions with her Right-to-Buy scheme, Margaret Thatcher turned tenants into owners, and owners into Tory voters. Thatcher’s property-owning democracy won the Conservatives four elections on the trot, and nearly two decades in power. The Conservatives cemented their status as the natural party of government.
Today, that coalition has collapsed. Whilst in 1990 the average house cost £50,000, the average in 2024 was £286,000. Rising from three times the median salary to eight, homeownership among 25–34-year-olds has plunged from 59% in 2000 to 39% today. Far from the party of property-owning democracy, the Tories are today seen by most under the age of 40 as the party of pensioners, landlords and a lifetime sentenced to either scrambling like rats in a sack for the keys to a cardboard box in Zone Two or living with your parents until your mid-thirties.
As a result, the Conservative Party has become radioactive. The Tories won 42% of voters under 50 in 1992. In 2024, this halved to one-fifth. Amongst under 25s, Tory support barely scraped into double digits. Graduates entering the workforce today find themselves trapped at the eye of the storm: stagnant wages, soaring rents and housing so unaffordable that the best chance for homeownership for most is by inheriting it. The Tories have lost their raison d’être.
Against this dismal backdrop, Labour’s announcement that 16- and 17-year-olds will be able to vote in the next election will go down at CCHQ about as well as a vegan sausage roll at a Reform Conference. Polls, after all, show that the young skew sharply left.
But history suggests otherwise. Teenagers are not locked into political tribes, nor are they simply statistics on YouGov. Age alone does not define voting habits – opportunity does. When the Conservatives gave young people the chance to own their own homes, start families and enjoy a comfortable lifestyle whilst living paycheck-to-paycheck, they gave them a share in their futures and were rewarded at the ballot box.
The solutions are not hard to find, but they require courage. Campaign to reform the 1947 planning system. Promise to end local vetoes on new homes. Open the Green Belt and abolish stamp duty for first-time buyers. Withdraw tax perks for buy-to-let landlords. Make it clear that the Tories are on the side of the young and aspirational – if that is who they say they are, they must prove it.
If the Conservatives want to have national appeal again, they must rediscover their roots as the party of property-owning democracy for all willing to work hard and play by the rules.
Disraeli’s warning rings true today again. A land divided between owners and renters is a land of two nations. If the Conservatives want a future, they must offer one. Only a new social contract, a new coalition of young and old alike, can revive the hope of Tory democracy and make Britain one nation again.
Tom Collins is studying for an MPhil in Modern European History at the University of Cambridge.