‘Untenable’ that average Conservative voter is 63 years old, Mel Stride admits

The average Conservative voter being 63 years old is “completely untenable,” leadership hopeful Mel Stride has admitted.

The shadow work and pensions secretary was asked by Times Radio about a poll which showed three in five people in the UK do not care who the next Conservative leader is.

He told the broadcaster: “The way I feel is, in a sense, not a huge amount of surprise.

“Because I think we have been a party that has been fighting itself and being introspective in a way that most people from the outside would have found pretty selfish.

“We did some great things when we were in government, absolutely great things, but there are areas where we failed to deliver.”

The MP for Central Devon, who served in Rishi Sunak’s cabinet leading the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), added: “We’ve got to get a hearing with the British electorate.

“And we’re going to do that through unity, and… a lot of listening and a lot of hard work and working out the answer to a lot of fundamental and difficult questions, including, for example, the fact that the average Conservative voter is aged 63, that is completely untenable.

“It is not something that you can solve by leaping on some magical ideological square. It is something you solve through deep, hard work over a sustained period of time.”

Stride also criticised X, formerly Twitter, owner Elon Musk’s recent commentary on UK politics as “absurd and deeply, deeply unhelpful”.

He said: “His comments suggesting that we’re on the brink of a civil war in this country is absurd and deeply, deeply unhelpful.

“I have concerns about X generally, in terms of the fairly permissive approach to those that are able to further all sorts of views, including conspiracy theories, etc, on that platform.

“And I do think that one of the takeaways from the very, very unfortunate incidents that have happened in recent days and weeks is we do need to look afresh at social media in terms of policing content, of consequence for those platform providers that allow some of these ideas to percolate, because they do have real world consequences, as we saw on our streets.”

But asked if he would stop using X, as some MPs have said they will no longer do, Stride said: “Me, personally no, certainly not at the moment.

“In my case, I will stay on the site, but I do think we do need to have a long and careful, measured look at the way in which sites like X are feeding into issues like conspiracy theories, misinformation and violence on our streets.”