WITH AHISTORIC ELECTION YEAR AHEAD, MARIE LE CONTELOOKS AT HOW WOMEN WILL SHAPE THE FUTURE OF BRITISH POLITICS
WHEN WILL THE NEXT GENERAL ELECTION be? No one knows. Well, perhaps Rishi Sunak does; the Prime Minister not-sohelpfully said he had a ‘working assumption’ that it would take place in late 2024.
As it happens, this will be a busy year in politics. Americans will also be going to the polls – the first time our two countries’ electoral cycles have synced since 1992. Already, there have been warnings about global disinformation campaigns – fuelled by AI and spread on social media – and what they may do to our already fragmented countries.
In total, over 60 nations – from India, Pakistan and Mexico to Taiwan and Ukraine – will be going to the polls before the end of 2024. Just under half of the world’s population is eligble to vote in some form of election this year, making it the biggest year for democracy in history. The world may well be a very different place by the time 2025 comes around.
In the UK’s case, at least, it feels like it has been a long time coming. The Conservatives have been in power for just under 14 years. Our last election was in 2019, but it feels like a lifetime ago. The pandemic was yet to reach our shores, Jeremy Corbyn was leading Labour, and Boris Johnson was Prime Minister.
Did you even vote for Johnson? If you’re reading this, it is statistically unlikely that you did. In 2019, 64% of women aged 18-24 and 54% aged 25-34 voted Labour. The numbers get a smidge narrower for the age group above that, but not by a huge margin. The last election was a disaster for the opposition, but would have been an annihilation event had it not been for young women.
Much has changed since then – Keir Starmer has replaced Corbyn, Sunak took over after a brief Liz Truss interlude – but one thing hasn’t. Women of working age remain a large voting bloc, and must be appealed to by parties hoping to win or retain Number 10. According to a study run by the Women’s Budget Group last October, 25% of female voters are still undecided, compared with 11% of their male counterparts. Does this mean it’s all to play for? Well, not exactly.
‘In the 20 years following World War II, women were more likely to vote Conservative,’ says Rosie Campbell, director of the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership. Britain was, at the time, in tune with many other democracies, but became an outlier in the 1980s, as women refused to follow the leftward turn of their counterparts in America, where single women, with or without children, found that Republicans didn’t cater to their economic interests. ‘In the US, a gender gap emerged, with mo
