We are genuinely in the midst of enormous social, political and economic change, which is why there is such division.
Within my own family, things have been very difficult: on the one hand there is my dad, a Conservative voter and Brexiteer, who believes that most of the issues we have are because of the influx of immigrants, who are why he cannot get hospital appointments, GP appointments or from A to B because of the excess traffic on the road. He believes that civil servants are lefties and wokes, and should be made to return to the office. He finds it difficult to listen to other perspectives and will not countenance the fact that an expanding population is, generally, beneficial to the economy but, naturally, requires investment in services.
My daughter has just got a job that she applied for. She left the last because the owner bought office space and asked my daughter to commit to working there part of the week. This went against the previous agreement they had. She also declined to give her a pay rise because of her reluctance to work in the office. Her new job is entirely remote, working from home, £10k more per year, gym membership and so on. She wishes to be able to travel, work abroad, and to be able to buy things from Europe.
The bridge between these two schools of thought strikes hard at political and social thinking. For myself, I admire my daughter's stance: she is skilled in what she does and understands that has a value, one that means that she doesn't need to simply accept what she is told. My dad, born at the end of WWII, is from a different era, worked seven days a week, and struggles to understand the changing world - he won't even have a bank card, refuses to buy online, and walks to the bank to get cash. He also forgets that we are an immigrant family who fled Ireland during the famine. Needless to say, he has always been a Conservative voter while, generally, the world is changing to a more liberal, left-leaning stance. Looking at the age profile of Conservative voters, unless things change for the Conservative party, their time is finite.
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