British Home Secretary Amber Rudd delivers her keynote speech at the Conservative Party Annual Conference 2017 in Manchester, Britain, on Oct. 3, 2017. (Xinhua/Han Yan)
MANCHESTER, Britain, Oct. 3 (Xinhua) -- Britain's governing Conservatives launched a campaign Tuesday to win young voters to the so-called blue corner of politics.
Some political commentators believe Prime Minister Theresa May's party will have an uphill struggle with figures showing Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn has become a "pied piper" in attracting the crucial vote among 18 to 24-year olds.
Labor says it wants to scrap tuition fees altogether, a huge carrot in attracting the student vote.
Corbyn's party have also vowed to act against zero-hours contracts which sees almost a million people, most of them young, working in jobs that only pay a wage when they are called into work.
To appeal to the young people, the Conservatives at their party conference in Manchester also offered to help students by freezing annual university tuition fees at 23,250 pounds (31,200 U.S. dollars) and increasing the annual salary level at which they start to pay off their loans to 25,000 pounds (33,200 U.S. dollars).
The Conservatives also unveiled a multi-billion-dollar plan to help first time buyers climb onto the property ladder with help for young home buyers.
As the pollsters at YouGov said recently: "In electoral terms, age seems to be the new dividing line in British politics. The starkest way to show this is to note that, amongst first time voters (those aged 18 and 19), Labor was 47 percentage points ahead."
In a survey of the way people voted in June's snap general election, around two thirds of voters aged 18 to 24 voted for Labor, while just about a fifth in the same age group gave their votes to the Conservatives.
The total turnout in June, at around 70 percent, was the highest for 25 years, with the number of young voters taking part in the poll 16 percent higher than the 2015 general election.
Despite an increase in youth turnout, young people are still noticeably less likely to vote than older people, says YouGov. That means there is plenty of scope for party managers to head out prospecting for that young vote.
Conservative leader Theresa May, in an interview for a conference publication, beamed the message: "We need to show young people that we have the policies to deal with issues young people are concerned about."
The British prime minister acknowledged that one of the challenges the June election has thrown up was the Conservatives inability to appeal to young people. Her party failed to win a majority of votes in any of the under-40s age groups.
"I think there is a generation out there who feel that they're going to be worse off than their parents," said May.
May says there is much work to be done to get the message across to young people about the importance of free markets, management of the economy and global trade.
"I think we thought those arguments were done and dusted. I think now we see we have to go back to them and make the case all over again," she said.
One issue, she highlighted, was that a generation has grown up in a different environment and haven't seen the problems that occur when there is a disbelief in free markets or sound management of the economy.
The Independent newspaper in one of its conference reports suggested some Conservatives believe their party's lack of support among the under-45s poses an existential threat to the party.
May said in her cover-story interview in the official conference magazine: "What we want as Conservatives is that people should be able to see a brighter future for their children."
