Are older, richer voters really against big spending? Maybe not as much as Labour fears | Philip Inman

Starmer desperately wants to win back the trust of a crucial, and famously cautious, demographic. But support for public investment is growing

Labour has a demographic mountain to climb when it puts forward plans to spendonly a few billions of pounds, letalone 28bn. The parliamentary constituencies the party must win from the Conservatives to secure an overall majority are overweight with older people who are resistant to change and want their government to watch the pennies.

Touting a pledge worth 18bn for green investments on top of 10bn already earmarked was always going to be vulnerable, especially when there was scant debate about how people might be affected, allowing speculation to escalate about its potentially deleterious effects.