Champagne socialists 'turn conservative after 40 or so'

London, July 14 (ANI): The old adage "If you're not a socialist at the age of 20 you have no heart. If you're not a conservative at the age of 40, you have no brain" holds some truth, according to a new study.

James Rockey, a lecturer in political economics at the University of Leicester, carried out the research.

Youthful liberalism and radical views gradually get diluted into a more conservative outlook as responsibilities weigh down with age.

"Politics is social," The Telegraph quoted Rockey as saying.

"There are two main factors - the first is that people compare themselves not to the population as a whole but to the people they know; the second is that political preferences change over time."

In the study, participants were asked to choose whether they were left wing or right wing. The results were compared with their actual ideologies - found by asking them whether they believed wealth should be divided more equally.

"This is further evidence not just that voters are far from fully informed, but that somehow voters consistently misperceive where they lie on the ideological spectrum," said Rockey.

One such example is Winston Churchill, who helped introduce the first minimum wage while serving as a Liberal minister in 1908, only rejoining the Tories at the age of 50 in 1924. (ANI)