Warning: Voting Tory can seriously damage your health – and your life expectancy

Boys born in one of the richest 20 per cent of neighbourhoods in 2015 could expect to outlive their counterparts in the bottom 20 per cent by a staggering eight years

Dame Karen Dunnell, who chairs the panel and is a former boss of the Office for National Statistics, was quite right when she said that dying earlier if you are poor is the most unfair outcome of all (Reuters)

It’s often pointed out that the Conservatives’ ageing Brexiteer membership is dying off, and the bile and bigotry that it has sown around the country will soon be with us no longer. Quite a relief, especially for those of us on the receiving end.

The sting in the tail is that we’ll have to wait a while. It has long been the case that mortality rates are falling. We’re all living longer. Yay us.

But the top 20 per cent are enjoying a greater improvement than those at the bottom of the income scale, and the effect is most pronounced among us men. Wealthy men, who make up the core of Tory voters, live the longest.

According to the Longevity Science Panel, which monitors mortality, boys born in one of the richest 20 per cent of neighbourhoods in 2015 could expect to outlive their counterparts in the bottom 20 per cent by a staggering 8.4 years. The same figure in 2001 was 7.2 years.

For women the effect was less pronounced but still there, and the gap was still widening, from five years in 2001 to 5.8 years in 2015.

The same is true for those closer to the grave than the cradle. A man aged 60 in one of Britain’s top 20 per cent of neighbourhoods in 2001 could expect to live 4.1 years longer than a man of the same age in one of the bottom 20 per cent. By 2015 that gap had reached 5.0 years. The figures for 60-year-old women are 3.1 years rising to 4.2 years.

Being poor is a killer. Quite literally and when it comes to life expectancy the rich are getting richer and, well, you know the rest of it don’t you.

Dame Karen Dunnell, who chairs the panel and is a former boss of the Office for National Statistics, was quite right when she said that dying earlier if you are poor is the most unfair outcome of all.

Your quality of life is also lower. You suffer more worry and stress. That often leads people to indulge in in behaviours such as smoking, or drinking heavily, to get through the day. That of course, well, again, you don’t need me to spell it out for you.

Dame Karen says she wants to see work carried out to secure a “better understanding of the precise causes” followed by “coordinated policy initiatives across health, work, welfare, pension and housing to improve outcomes for all”. I think we’ve come up with the starter for 10, for whomever is tasked with carrying it out.

In the meantime, it mightn’t be such a bad idea to focus on making fewer people poor. Unfortunately, we are cursed with a Government that has done the precise opposite.

When it unleashed austerity it made sure it hit the poorest hardest. Millionaires got a tax cut. The people they step over when they leave the opera got universal credit, the benefits cap, public-sector pay curbs, an economy that has seen wages consistently lagging behind inflation. I could go on. And on, and on, and on.

The Tory project of Brexit, backed most enthusiastically by elderly Tory members, has contributed to a decline in inflation-adjusted incomes for the majority of Britons for the last 11 months and counting, and we haven’t even yet left the union yet. You might care to take note of what businesses have been saying about the Tory approach to that. They’re not very happy. And if they’re not happy, their workforces sure as hell aren’t going to be happy.

People voting for that wretched, wretched party is what has led us to this place.

There really ought to be one of those health notices like you find on cigarette packets on ballot papers.

Warning: Voting Tory can seriously damage your health and your wealth if you’re not loaded. Your doctor or your pharmacist can help you with stopping. Especially if they work in the NHS.

And don’t even get me started on the NHS.