LONDON — Thousands of curious young minds in the U.K. are spending the next few weeks getting ready for their move to university. Amid the whirlwind of making new friends, testing out the college bar and surviving Freshers’ Week, registering to vote at their new home may not be high on their priority list.
That will suit the Conservative Party just fine.
With parliament deadlocked on Brexit, an early general election has looked inevitable for months. The question is when? Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s preferred date is October 15. But the Labour Party refused to back a motion Wednesday calling for an early poll and it looks likely that in coordination with other opposition parties they can force a later national ballot once an extension of the Halloween Brexit deadline has been secured.
Much of the calculus in No. 10 Downing Street on the optimum date for a poll revolves around whether going early or late makes it easier to pull together an electoral coalition of Leave supporters. Going to the country after yet another Brexit delay may not be a great look for a prime minister who promised “do or die” to get Brexit done by October 31 — even if he will blame any delay on MPs in parliament.
A further hiatus will likely make it easier for Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party to peel away voters who have lost faith in the Tories’ ability to deliver on the U.K.’s departure from the EU.
This year’s university intake contains a record number of students from disadvantaged backgrounds — not natural Conservative supporters.
But there’s another factor that, according to No. 10 officials I have spoken to, is feeding into Johnson’s thinking. The longer a delay to any election goes on, the more students will register to vote in their campus constituencies. The Tories traditionally do badly with younger voters who are also overwhelmingly anti-Brexit. What’s more, this year’s university intake contains a record number of students from disadvantaged backgrounds — not natural Conservative supporters.
This should be ringing alarm bells inside Tory HQ. Figures from think tank Onward show only 28 percent of the general student population will even consider voting Conservative, converting to around 16 percent that actually do.
Just under a million people registered to vote in the last six months from the under-35 age group with 70,000 registering in the last few days. An early general election would stop this trickle becoming a flood.
Reflecting back to the day I packed up everything but the kitchen sink and left home for university, I cannot remember registering to vote at my new address even once during those three years of my undergraduate course, despite the fact I was a politics student. I was too busy working out how to budget what little money I had; making new friends; and turning up to the odd lecture.
If the election is little more than a month away, are distracted students enjoying their first few weeks of university life really going to go all the way back to their parental home just to put a cross in the box? It depends on how angry they are and how motivated they are to be heard.
Once term starts, opposition parties will be racing to sign them up to the electoral roll in their new home. Their votes might just be enough to deprive Johnson of a few crucial seats.
Katie Perrior is chair of iNHouse Communications. She was formerly No. 10 Downing Street director of communications under Theresa May.
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