News

The Telegraph

17 July 2025

The seats that Labour’s teenage voters will steal from Reform

Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s new hard-Left political party could create an earthquake for younger voters.

One in three voters aged under-25 previously said that they would consider voting for this new party when it formally emerges.

Analysis from More in Common also highlights that seats with the highest number of 16 to 17-year-olds saw independents and Workers Party perform their best.

Young voters, it would seem, are the most drawn to Labour, but also the most likely to stray from the traditional Left altogether.

BBC News

17 July 2025

Which parties could benefit from lower voting age?

In the UK, 16 and 17-year-olds make up only around 2.8% of the population aged 16 or above, so researchers say the impact on party vote share is likely to be negligible.

Turnout for elections also tends to be lower for younger age groups and if this is also true for 16 and 17-year-olds they would be an even smaller proportion of the electorate.

Luke Tryl, UK director of political research group More in Common, says he would not expect this age group to have "an outsized impact".

However, he adds: "Then again we are in an era where small shares of the vote can deliver you lots of seats in multi-party politics."

The Spectator

17 July 2025

‘Let Keir be Keir’: inside the cabinet’s away day

Luke Tryl of pollsters More in Common told a Spectator event on Tuesday evening: ‘What Labour has struggled with is that people don’t know what it’s about.’ Asked what they want from Labour at its best, voters answer ‘tackle poverty, support the working class and improve public services’. Tryl said: ‘People elect Tory and Labour governments for very different things. That rose garden speech, where Starmer said it was going to be more of the “tough choices” which people have heard about since the financial crash, got people thinking: “This isn’t why we got these guys in.” Winter fuel and the welfare cuts really jarred. In politics, you want to be congruent with what people think you’re about.’

The New Statesman

15 July 2025

Britain’s shattered trust

Westminster loves a good piece of polling research, and the latest offering from More In Common – dramatically entitled Shattered Britain – has captured imaginations as Parliament limps towards the summer recess.

Key to the analysis is not what separates Brits, but what unites us. And somewhat terrifyingly, that unifying theme seems to be a sense of mistrust. A staggering 87 per cent of people trust politicians not very much or not at all, with net negative trust among all seven groups. This tallies with the latest annual British Social Attitudes survey, published last month, which found that “Just 12 per cent trust governments to put the interests of the nation above those of their own party just about always or most of the time, a record low”.

Metro

14 July 2025

Politicians? We don't trust any of you

The UK is ‘shattered’ into different ideological factions, a report has found, with each holding distinct ideas about what’s wrong with the country and how to fix it.

Politicians face a serious challenge winning back the trust of Brits too, with almost nine in ten having little or no faith in them, according to the findings.

A major new poll at the centre of the report lays bare just how disillusioned we are with the current system, and the depth of pessimism over whether things will get better.

The Times

13 July 2025

The new UK tribes: are you a rooted patriot or Waterstones dad?

ritain is a “shattered nation” and seven in ten voters believe it is on the “wrong track”, according to a new think tank report which offers a stark assessment of the country’s mood.

While geographic identities like “red wall” and “blue wall” were used to explain the post-Brexit political landscape, the research by More in Common suggests cultural values have become a bigger dividing line than geography. Since the pandemic, British people have increasingly split along their views on multiculturalism, free speech and whether Britain should reform key institutions or “burn the system down”.

While they remain trusting of their neighbours, 87 per cent have little or no trust in politicians. Some 36 per cent say the Covid pandemic was exaggerated to control people.