The War On The Old

The war on the old has been declared.

In the post-Brexit world, intergenerational conflict has become a visible phenomenon. There is an overwhelming sense of blame from younger generations: it was the wrinklies, the grey-haired plutocracy, who voted Leave; who are overburdening hospitals, shutting the youth out of the housing market and hoarding accumulated wealth.

By 2020, we are told, one in five Britons will be pensioners, and living a longer retirement than ever before. A good thing, politicians add, through gritted teeth. The truth is that for them, the old are a social, economic and political inconvenience.

John Sutherland (age 78, and feeling keenly what he writes about) examines this intergenerational combat as a new kind of war in which institutional neglect and universal indifference to the old has reached aggressive, and routinely lethal, levels. This is a book which sets out to provoke but in the process tells some deep and inconvenient truths, revealing something British society would rather not think about.