Try blaming educated youth vote

Martin Bristow ascribes blame to “economic illiteracy”, which he attributes to Jeremy Corbyn. OK, it’s not my academic discipline, although my knowledge is probably more Janet and John than just illiterate.

So I rely on people who do know what they’re talking about, and every week I read at least one article by an economist from a respected academic or governmental institution criticising Tory policy or agreeing with Labour, with the author frequently drawn from among those economists who foresaw that 2008 global crisis.

M Gough blames the mythical Left-wing bias of the BBC. Never mind that peer-reviewed studies have found time and time again that this is the opposite of the truth. Gough seems to have missed the aggressive questioning of Corbyn and even the manufacturing of fake news about him by the toxic Laura Kuenssberg. The Beeb has apologised, but Kuenssberg remains in post.

Alan Etheridge blames the “naïve youth”. Hmm. Looks like the Kippers have given up on the yoof vote. Naivety can come at any age. Look at all the old boys who think Empire 2.0 is going to pick up any lost trade with Europe, blithely ignoring awkward details like the Irish Republic spending more in the UK than India does.

Consider also that young people are much more likely to be well educated than their elders. As in the Brexit referendum, level of education has again proved a strong indicator of the way people would vote. Here in Walsall North, with the second or third lowest proportion of graduates in the country, we have one of the few constituencies where Labour lost to the Tories.

By contrast, Labour has won graduate-heavy Warwick and Leamington and even Canterbury, which had been held by the Tories so long that it held the world record for representation by the same party. Perhaps try blaming the “educated youth”?

Alan T Harrison, Walsall